Today In History April 27

HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY ON THIS DATE

1509 - Pope Julius II excommunicates the Italian state of Venice.

1521 - Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan is killed in the Philippines.

1828 - London Zoo opens in Regents Park.

1830 - Simon Bolivar, the former revolutionary fighter who helped end Spain's domination of South America, abdicates as President of Colombia.

1865 - The steamboat Sultana explodes on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tennessee, killing more than 1400 Union prisoners-of-war.

1896 - Sir Henry Parkes, Australia's "Father of Federation", dies at the age of 80.

1910 - Louis Botha and James Hertzog found the South African Party.

1938 - Greece and Turkey sign treaty of friendship.

1941 - Athens falls to German invaders after 180 days of Greek resistance in World War II.

1945 - Allies reject peace offers by German SS chief Heinrich Himmler, insisting on unconditional surrender.

1945 - Austrian statehood is proclaimed under Allied occupation.

1950 - Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies introduces a bill to outlaw the Communist Party.

1960 - South Korea's founding president Syngman Rhee is toppled in a nationwide pro-democracy student uprising protesting election fraud; Togo becomes an independent republic.

1961 - Sierra Leone becomes independent from Britain.

1969 - Bolivian President Rene Barrientos Ortuno is killed in a helicopter crash.

1972 - US Apollo 16 spacecraft and three astronauts make a safe landing in the Pacific after a journey to the moon.

1976 - First Vietnamese refugee boatpeople arrive in Darwin.

1978 - Mohammed Daoud is thrown out in a bloody coup and replaced by Afghanistan's first communist ruler, Nur Mohammed Taraki.

1982 - The trial of John Hinckley Jr, who shot four people including US President Ronald Reagan, begins in Washington; Hinckley is acquitted by reason of insanity.

1992 - Russia and 12 other former Soviet republics win entry into the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

1993 - Eritreans overwhelmingly choose independence from Ethiopia in a referendum.

1993 - In a step toward detente, kynghidongduong.vn semi-official representatives of Taiwan and China meet in Singapore for the first time since 1949.

1994 - The US and six Arab oil nations join to denounce Iraq and pledge to maintain an international squeeze on Saddam Hussein's government.

1996 - Rwandan soldiers kill 38 people in retaliation for the slaying of one of their own in a northwestern Rwanda village two weeks earlier.

1997 - A Brazilian judge sentences a former police officer convicted of massacring 21 residents of a Rio de Janeiro slum to almost 450 years in prison, saying his actions "demeaned all values of human existence".

1997 - Hong Kong officially opens the world's longest road-rail suspension bridge, linking the colony to its new offshore airport.

1999 - A laser-guided bomb goes astray during a NATO bombing mission over Yugoslavia, killing at least 20 civilians in the village of Surdulica.

2000 - Palaeontologists unveil a two-million-year-old skull of a female Paranthropus robustus, a cousin of early man. The fossil was found in South Africa.

2001 - Six workers of the International Committee of the Red Cross are shot and hacked to death in Congo, the deadliest attack on the aid group in five years.

2002 - South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth arrives at the international space station for an eight-day, seven-night cruise that cost him $US20 million ($A32.68 million); Mattel toy company co-founder Ruth Handler, who created Barbie, dies in Los Angeles aged 85.

2005 - Angry young Togolese lob stones and petrol bombs after the son of their late dictator is declared winner of presidential elections.

2007 - Saudi Arabia announces the arrests of 172 Islamic militants, some of whom had trained abroad as pilots so they could fly aircraft in attacks on Saudi oil fields.

2008 - Australian Special Forces soldier Lance Corporal Jason Marks, 27, is killed in a Taliban attack in Afghanistan.

2010 - Ratings agency Standard & Poor's pushes Greece to the brink of a financial abyss and also downgrades Portugal's debt, fuelling fears of a continent-wide debt meltdown in Europe.

2012 - The space shuttle Enterprise sails over New York on top of a modified jumbo jet on its final flight before it becomes a museum piece.

2013 - Two months after Italy's inconclusive election results, centre-left leader Enrico Letta forges a new government in a coalition with former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's conservatives.

2014 - Two 20th-century popes who changed the course of the Roman Catholic church become saints as Pope Francis honours John XXIII and John Paul II in a delicate balancing act aimed at bringing together the conservative and progressive wings of the church.

2015 - Two days before his execution in Indonesia, Australian drug smuggler Andrew Chan marries Febyanti Herewila, whom he met when she was visiting another prisoner.

2017 - A Russian spy ship sinks off the coast of Turkey after colliding with another vessel, but all 78 personnel are safely evacuated.

2018 - The members of ABBA say they have recorded new material for the first time in 35 years, which they described as "an extremely joyous experience".

2019 - Prime Minister Scott Morrison appears alongside former Liberal prime minister John Howard to pledge a re-elected Coalition government would crack down on who comes to Australia.

TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS:

Edward Gibbon, English historian (1737-1794); Samuel Morse, US inventor (1791-1872); Ulysses S Grant, US president and general (1822-1885); Jack Klugman, US actor (1922-2012); Coretta Scott King, US civil rights activist (1927-2006); Anouk Aimee, French actor (1932-); Nick Greiner, former NSW premier (1947-); Kate Pierson, US singer of B52s fame (1948-); Paul "Ace" Frehley, US musician of Kiss fame (1951-); Mark Holden, Australian singer and TV personality (1954-); Sheena Easton, Scottish singer (1959-); Erik Thomson, tour trung quốc Australian actor (1967-); Nick Kyrgios, Australian tennis player (1995-).

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

The reign of Antoninus is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history, which is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. - Edward Gibbon, English historian (1737-1794)