Events on December 27 37
Year 1512
The Spanish Crown issues the Laws of Burgos, governing the conduct of settlers with regard to native Indians in the New World.
Year 1521
The Zwickau prophets arrive in Wittenberg disturbing the peace and preaching the Apocalypse. Philip Melanchthon cannot silence them. Martin Luther is being held in protective custody at the Wartburg castle at this time. He is later released and is able, by his preaching, to regain the peace.
Year 1655
Second Northern War/the Deluge: Monks at the Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa are successful in fending off a month-long siege.
Year 1703
Portugal and England sign the Methuen Treaty which gives preference to Portuguese imported wines into England.
Year 1814
War of 1812: The American schooner USS Carolina is destroyed. It was the last of Commodore Daniel Patterson's makeshift fleet that fought a series of delaying actions that contributed to Andrew Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans.
Year 1831
Charles Darwin embarks on his journey aboard the HMS Beagle, during which he will begin to formulate his theory of evolution.
Year 1836
The worst ever avalanche in England occurs at Lewes, Sussex, killing eight people.
Year 1845
Ether anesthetic is used for childbirth for the first time by Dr. Crawford Long in Jefferson, Georgia.
Year 1845
Journalist John L. O'Sullivan, writing in his newspaper the New York Morning News, argues that the United States had the right to claim the entire Oregon Country "by the right of our manifest destiny".
Year 1911
"Jana Gana Mana", the national anthem of India, is first sung in the Calcutta Session of the Indian National Congress.
Year 1922
Japanese aircraft carrier Hōshō becomes the first purpose built aircraft carrier to be commissioned in the world.
Year 1927
Show Boat, considered to be the first true American musical play, opens at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Broadway.
Year 1929
Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin orders the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class".
Year 1939
The 7.8 Mw Erzincan earthquake shakes eastern Turkey with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). At least 32,700 people were killed.
Year 1945
The International Monetary Fund is created with the signing of an agreement by 29 nations.
Year 1949
Indonesian National Revolution: The Netherlands officially recognizes Indonesian independence. End of the Dutch East Indies.
Year 1966
The Cave of Swallows, the largest known cave shaft in the world, is discovered in Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, Mexico.
Year 1968
Apollo program: Apollo 8 splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the first orbital manned mission to the Moon.
Year 1983
Pope John Paul II visits Mehmet Ali Ağca in Rebibbia's prison and personally forgives him for the 1981 attack on him in St. Peter's Square.
Year 1985
Palestinian guerrillas kill eighteen people inside the airports of Rome, Italy, and Vienna, Austria.
Year 1989
The Romanian Revolution concludes, as the last minor street confrontations and stray shootings abruptly end in the country's capital, Bucharest.
Year 1996
Taliban forces retake the strategic Bagram Airfield which solidifies their buffer zone around Kabul, Afghanistan.
Year 1997
Protestant paramilitary leader Billy Wright is assassinated in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.
Year 2002
Two truck bombs kill 72 and wound 200 at the pro-Moscow headquarters of the Chechen government in Grozny, Chechnya, Russia.
Year 2004
Radiation from an explosion on the magnetar SGR 1806-20 reaches Earth. It is the brightest extrasolar event known to have been witnessed on the planet.
Year 2007
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in a shooting incident.
Year 2007
Riots erupt in Mombasa, Kenya, after Mwai Kibaki is declared the winner of the presidential election, triggering a political, economic, and humanitarian crisis.
Year 2009
Iranian election protests: On the Day of Ashura in Tehran, Iran, government security forces fire upon demonstrators.