This Day in History — October 27
Today is the 301st day of 2020. There are 65 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2006: Germany’s military suspends two soldiers from duty in connection with photos of troops posing with a skull in Afghanistan.
OTHER EVENTS
1787: The first of the Federalist Papers, a series of essays calling for ratification of the US Constitution, is published in a New York newspaper.
1871: Britain annexes the diamond fields of Kimberly, South Africa.
1904: The first rapid transit subway opens in New York City.
1922: Southern Rhodesia referendum rejects joining Union of South Africa.
1938: US company DuPont announces the invention of nylon.
1977: US President Jimmy Carter rules out any US embargo on trade with South Africa or any ban on US investments to protest its racial policies.
1987: South Korean voters approve a new constitution, clearing the way for the first direct presidential elections in 16 years.
1990: Roman Catholic bishops concluded a month-long synod in Rome, reaffirming the policy of celibacy for priests. The possibility of easing the church’s opposition to married priests came up as a way to help overcome a shortage of clerics in some dioceses.
1999: Up to five gunmen seize Armenia’s Parliament in a torrent of automatic weapons fire, killing the prime minister and seven others before taking dozens hostage; the US federal budget surplus is put at $123 billion in 1998, marking the first back-to-back surpluses since the 1950s.
2002: Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wins Brazil’s presidential run-off election, becoming the nation’s first leftist and working-class president.
2004: Pleading they cannot properly defend an unwilling client, Slobodan Milosevic’s court-appointed lawyers ask to quit, leaving the UN tribunal in a dilemma over how to conclude the most important war crimes trial in half a century in a way history will judge as fair.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
John Cleese, English actor/comedian (1939- ); Marla Maples, US actress, model, second wife of Donald Trump (1963- ); Sylvia Plath, US writer, poet, journalist (1932-1963); Theodore Roosevelt, US president (1858-1919)
— AP
