more events on March 27
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1977
In aviation’s worst disaster yet, 582 die when a KLM Pan Am 747 crashes.
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1976
Washington, D.C. opens its subway system.
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1958
The United States announces a plan to explore space near the moon.
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1952
Elements of the U.S. Eighth Army reach the 38th parallel in Korea, the original dividing line between the two Koreas.
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1945
General Dwight Eisenhower declares that the German defenses on the Western Front have been broken.
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1944
Thousands of Jews are murdered in Kaunas, Lithuania. The Gestapo shoots forty Jewish policemen in the Riga, Latvia ghetto.
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One thousand Jews leave Drancy, France for the Auschwitz concentration camp.
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1942
The British raid the Nazi submarine base at St. Nazaire, France.
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1941
Takeo Yoshikawa arrives in Oahu, Hawaii, to begin spying for Japan on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor.
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1933
Some 55,000 people stage a protest against Hitler in New York.
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1924
Sarah Vaughan, jazz singer.
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1923
Louis Simpson, Pultizer Prize-winning poet.
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1914
Budd Schulberg, journalist, novelist and screenwriter (What Makes Sammy Run).
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1912
The first cherry blossom trees, a gift from Japan, are planted in Washington, D.C.
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1910
John Robinson Pierce, the father of communications satellites.
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1906
Pee Wee Russell, jazz clarinetist.
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1900
The London Parliament passes the War Loan Act, which gives 35 million pounds to the Boer War cause.
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1899
The Italian inventor G. Marconi achieves the first international radio transmission between England and France.
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1884
The first long-distance telephone call is made from Boston to New York.
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1879
Edward Steichen, pioneer of American photography.
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1866
President Andrew Johnson vetoes the civil rights bill, which later becomes the 14th amendment.
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1863
Sir Henry Royce, cofounder of the Rolls-Royce automotive company.
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1845
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, German physicist, accidentally discovered X-rays.
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1836
The Mexican army massacres Texan rebels at Goliad.
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1814
U.S. troops under Gen. Andrew Jackson inflict a crushing defeat on the Creek Indians at Horshoe Bend in Northern Alabama.
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1813
Nathaniel Currier, lithographer for Currier and Ives.
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1809
Georges-Eugene Haussmann, French town planner, designed modern-day Paris.
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1802
The Treaty of Amiens is signed, ending the French Revolutionary War.
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1785
Louis XVII, pretender to the throne during the French Revolution.
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1512
Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sights Florida.
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1350
While besieging Gibraltar, Alfonso XI of Castile dies of the black death.