May 27
1647 - Alse Young (Achsah Young or Alice Young), a resident of Windsor, CT, was executed for being a "witch." It was the first recorded American execution of a "witch."
1668 - Three colonists were expelled from Massachusetts for being Baptists.
1813 - Americans captured Fort George, Canada.
1861 - U.S. Chief Justice Roger Taney, sitting as a federal circuit court judge in Baltimore, ruled that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln lacked the authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus.
1896 - 255 people were killed in St. Louis, MO, when a tornado struck.
1901 - The Edison Storage Battery Company was organized.
1907 - The Bubonic Plague broke out in San Francisco.
1919 - A U.S. Navy seaplane completed the first transatlantic flight.
1926 - Bronze figures of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer were erected in Hannibal, MO.
1929 - Colonel Charles Lindbergh and Anne Spencer Murrow were married.
1931 - Piccard and Knipfer made the first flight into the stratosphere, by balloon.
1933 - Walt Disney's "Three Little Pigs" was first released.
1933 - In the U.S., the Federal Securities Act was signed. The act required the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission.
1935 - The U.S. Supreme Court declared that U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act was unconstitutional.
1936 - The Cunard liner RMS Queen Mary left England on its maiden voyage to New York.
1937 - In California, the Golden Gate Bridge was opened to pedestrian traffic. The bridge connected San Francisco and Marin County.
1941 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed an "unlimited national emergency" amid rising world tensions.
1941 - The German battleship Bismarck was sunk by British naval and air forces. 2,300 people were killed.
1942 - German General Erwin Rommel began a major offensive in Libya with his Afrika Korps.
1944 - U.S. General MacArthur landed on Biak Island in New Guinea.
1960 - A military coup overthrew the democratic government of Turkey.
1964 - Indian Prime Minister Jawaharla Nehru died.
1968 - After 48 years as coach of the Chicago Bears, George Halas retired.
1968 - The U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. O'Brien, upheld the conviction of David O'Brien for destroying his draft card outside a Boston courthouse, ruling that the act was not protected by freedom of speech.
1969 - Construction of Walt Disney World began in Florida.
1977 - George H. Willig was fined for scaling the World Trade Center in New York on May 26. He was fined $1.10.
1982 - Japan announced the elimination of tariffs on 96 industrial goods.
1985 - In Beijing, representatives of Britain and China exchanged instruments of ratification on the pact returning Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997.
1986 - Mel Fisher recovered a jar that contained 2,300 emeralds from the Spanish ship Atocha. The ship sank in the 17th century.
1988 - The U.S. Senate ratified the INF treaty. The INF pact was the first arms-control agreement since the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) to receive Senate approval.
1994 - Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia. He had been in exile for two decades.
1995 - In Charlottesville, VA, Christopher Reeve was paralyzed after being thrown from his horse during a jumping event.
1996 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin negotiated a cease-fire to the war in Chechnya in his first meeting with the leader of the rebels.
1997 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the sexual harassment suit filed by Paula Jones could continue while President Clinton was in office.
1998 - Charlie Sheen was admitted to a hospital in Los Angeles for a drug overdose.
1998 - Michael Fortier was sentenced to 12 years in prison for not warning anyone about the plot to bomb an Oklahoma City federal building.
1999 - In The Hague, Netherlands, a war crimes tribunal indicted Slobodan Milosevic and four others for atrocities in Kosovo. It was the first time that a sitting head of state had been charged with such a crime.
2010 - Universal Studios reopened its backlot. The area had been destroyed by a fire two years before.
2017 - Pandora - The World of Avatar opened at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
