What happened today
1933
Famous birthdays
1971
Get history's greatest tales
Subscribe to our HistoryNet Now! newsletter for a blast from the past each week in your inbox.
more events on December 27
-
2007
After Mwai Kibaki is declared the winner of Kenya’s presidential elections, rioting begins in Mombasa, precipitating an economic, humanitarian and political crisis.
-
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto assassinated.
-
2004
Radiation reaches Earth from the brightest extrasolar event ever witnessed, an explosion of magnetar SGR 1806-20.
-
2001
China receives permanent normal trade relations with the US.
-
1996
Taliban forces retake strategic Bagram Airfield during Afghan civil war.
-
1985
Palestinian guerrillas kill 18 people at airports in Rome and Vienna.
-
1984
Four Polish officers are tried for the slaying of Reverend Jerzy Popieluszko.
-
1983
-
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.
-
1975
Heather O’Rourke, child actress discovered at age 5 by Stephen Spielberg; she died at age 12 (Poltergeist film series).
-
1971
Savannah Guthrie, journalist; co-host of NBC’s The Today Show.
-
1968
The United States agrees to sell F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.
-
1962
Bill Self, college men’s basketball coach; named the National Coach of the Year in 2000, 2009 and 2011 by The Sporting News and Associated Press National Coach of the Year 2009.
-
1956
Segregation on buses in Tallahassee, Florida, is outlawed.
-
1950
The United States and Spain resume relations for the first time since the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.