History of the Day for:
April 27
- 1521: Ferdinand Magellan, Portuguese navigator, was killed by natives on the island of Mactan in the Philippines while on a pioneering round-the-world voyage.
- 1805: U.S. Marines captured the city of Derna, on the shores of Tripoli.
- 1822: The 18th president of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio.
- 1865: The boiler on the steamer Sultana exploded on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tenn., killing 1,547.
- 1880: The hearing aid was patented.
- 1937: The first Social Security checks were issued.
- 1932: American poet Hart Crane, 32, drowned after jumping from a steamer while en route to New York.
- 1941: World War II: German troops enter Athens.
- 1941: World War II: The Communist Party of Slovenia, the Slovene Christian Socialists, the left-wing Slovene Sokols (also known as "National Democrats") and a group of progressive intellectuals establish the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People.
- 1945: World War II: German troops are finally expelled from Finnish Lapland.
- 1945: World War II: The Völkischer Beobachter, the newspaper of the Nazi Party, ceases publication.
- 1945: World War II: Benito Mussolini is arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, while attempting escape disguised as a German soldier.
- 1978: Convicted Watergate defendant John D. Ehrlichman was released from an Arizona prison after serving 18 months.
- 1983: Nolan Ryan of the Houston Astros broke Walter Johnson's strikeout record as he struck out his 3,509th batter of his career.
- 1791: Samuel Morse, inventor of the Morse Code, was born.
- 1956: Rocky Marciano retired as the undefeated world heavyweight boxing champion.
- 1997: Hong Kong officially opened the world's longest road-rail suspension bridge, linking the colony to its new offshore airport.
- 2002: The last successful telemetry from the NASA space probe Pioneer 10.
- 2005: The Superjumbo jet aircraft Airbus A380 makes its first flight from Toulouse, France.
- 2006: Construction begins on the Freedom Tower for the new World Trade Center in New York City.
- 2007: Estonian authorities remove the Bronze Soldier, a Soviet Red Army war memorial in Tallinn, amid political controversy with Russia.