GMT 12/27/2017

Today in History December 27

1512--The laws of Burgos give New World natives legal protection against abuse and authorize Negro slavery.

1831--HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin on board, departs from Plymouth. It will eventually visit the Galapagos Islands where Darwin will form his theories on evolution.

1862--Union General William Rosecrans' army begins moving slowly toward Murfreesboro, Tennessee, from Nashville.

1913--Charles Moyer, president of the Miners Union, is shot in the back and dragged through the streets of Chicago.

1915--In Ohio, iron and steel workers go on strike for an eight-hour day and higher wages.

1932--Radio City Music Hall opens.

1933--Josef Stalin calls tensions with Japan a grave danger.

1939--A series of vicious earthquakes take 11,000 lives in Turkey.

1941--Japanese bombers attack Manila, despite its claim as an open city.

1944--General George S. Patton's Third Army, spearheaded by the 4th Armored Division, relieves the surrounded city of Bastogne in Belgium.

1945--The International Monetary Fund and the Bank for Reconstruction and Development are created.

1947--The new Italian constitution is promulgated in Rome.

1950--The United States and Spain resume relations for the first time since the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.

1956--Segregation on buses in Tallahassee, Florida, is outlawed.

1968--The United States agrees to sell F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.

1979--President Hafizullah Amin of Afghanistan is ousted and murdered in a coup backed by the Soviet Union, beginning a war that will last more than 10 years.

1983--President Reagan takes all responsibility for the lack of security in Beirut that allowed a terrorist on a suicide mission to kill 241 Marines.

1984--Four Polish officers are tried for the slaying of Reverend Jerzy Popieluszko.

1985--Palestinian guerrillas kill 18 people at airports in Rome and Vienna.

1996--Taliban forces retake strategic Bagram Airfield during Afghan civil war.

2001==China receives permanent normal trade relations with the US.

2004-- Radiation reaches Earth from the brightest extrasolar event ever witnessed, an explosion of magnetar SGR 1806-20.

2007--After Mwai Kibaki is declared the winner of Kenya's presidential elections, rioting begins in Mombasa, precipitating an economic, humanitarian and political crisis.


Born on December 27

1919--Major General Charles Sweeney, the pilot of Bocks Car, the B-29 that dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan.



JOKE OF THE DAY

Why did I get divorced? Well, last week was my birthday. My wife didn't wish me a happy birthday. My parents forgot and so did my kids. I went to work and even my colleagues didn't wish me a happy birthday. As I entered my office, my secretary said, "Happy birthday, boss!" I felt so special. She asked me out for lunch. After lunch, she invited me to her apartment. We went there and she said, "Do you mind if I go into the bedroom for a minute?" "Okay," I said. She came out 5 minutes later with a birthday cake, my wife, my parents, my kids, my friends, & my colleagues all yelling, "SURPRISE!!!" while I was waiting on the sofa... naked.