History of the Day for:
January 27
- 1756: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria.
- 1785: The oldest state university in America, the University of Georgia, was chartered in Athens.
- 1832: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" under the pen name Lewis Carroll, was born in Cheshire, England.
- 1870: Kappa Alpha Theta, the first American Greek letter sorority, was founded at DePauw University.
- 1880: Thomas Edison received a patent for his electric incandescent lamp.
- 1888: The National Geographic Society was founded in Washington, D.C.
- 1918: "Tarzan of the Apes," the first Tarzan film, premiered at the Broadway Theater.
- 1926: John Logie Baird of Scotland demonstrated the first television set, the iconoscope, a mechanical scanning system.
- 1939: First flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.
- 1943: The first all-American air raid against Germany during World War II took place as some 50 bombers struck Wilhelmshaven.
- 1944: The Soviet Union announced the end of the German siege of Leningrad (900 days); Casey Stengel, manager of the Boston Braves since 1938, resigned to give the new management a free hand with the team.
- 1945: Soviet troops liberated the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland.
- 1951: Atomic testing in the Nevada desert began when an Air Force plane dropped a 1-kiloton bomb on Frenchman Flats.
- 1967: A flash fire during an evening practice session claimed the lives of Apollo 1 astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee.
- 1970: The movie rating system was modified. The "M" rating was replaced by "PG," calling for parental guidance. The "R" rating was amended to limiting admission to 17 year old and older, and the "X" rating was created.
- 1973: The Vietnam peace accords were signed in Paris, formally bringing to an end the longest foreign war in U.S. history.
- 1983: Pilot shaft of the Seikan Tunnel, the world's longest sub-aqueous tunnel (53.85 km) between the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido, breaks through.
- 1984: At the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, singer Michael Jackson was burned during filming for a Pepsi commercial when a flare explosion ignited his hair; Wayne Gretzky set a National Hockey League record for consecutive game scoring when his streak ended at 51 games. Gretzky collected 153 points - 61 goals and 92 assists - during the run.
- 1986: L. Ron Hubbard, novelist and founder of the Church of Scientology, died at age 74.
- 1988: The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved the nomination of Judge Anthony M. Kennedy to the U.S. Supreme Court.
- 1991: Nadine Strossen became the first female president of the ACLU.
- 1992: Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton and Arkansas resident Jennifer Flowers accused each other of lying in a renewed dispute over her assertion that they had a 12-year affair.
- 1996: Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara deposes the first democratically elected president of Niger, Mahamane Ousmane, in a military coup.
- 1996: Germany first observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
- 2006: Western Union discontinues its Telegram and Commercial Messaging services.