April 27

711 – Moslem troops led by Tariq ibn Ziyad land at Gibraltar to begin their invasion of the Iberian Peninsula.

1521 – In the Philippines, Ferdinand Magellan is killed by natives on Mactan island.

1539 – Nikolaus Federmann and Sebastián de Belalcázar found the city of Bogotá, New Granada (now Colombia)

1667 – John Milton sells Paradise Lost to a printer for £10, so that it could be entered into the Stationers’ Register.

1813 – During the War of 1812, American troops capture York (now Toronto, Ontario) the capital of the colony of Upper Canada.

1861 – Claiming powers given by Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 of the Constitution, President Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus which is overruled a month later by the U.S. Supreme Court in Ex parte Merryman.

1945 – Benito Mussolini is arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, Italy while attempting escape disguised as a German soldier.

1953 – The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff authorize Operation Moolah, which offers $50,000 to any pilot who defects with a fully mission capable MiG-15  to South Korea. The first pilot to defect would receive an additional $50,000. North Korean pilot Senior Lieutenant No Kum Sok, NKA (now Kenneth Rowe) later defects with his jet fighter on September 21st, after the armistice was signed, having not even heard of the reward offer.

1976 – American Airlines Flight 625, a Boeing 727 overruns the end of Runway 9 when landing at Harry S. Truman (now Cyril E. King) Airport in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, killing 37 of the 88 passengers and crew aboard

1978 – In the deadliest construction accident in United States history, 51 construction workers are killed when a cooling tower under construction collapses at the Pleasants Power Station in Willow Island, West Virginia.

1981 – Xerox’ Palo Alto Research Center introduces the computer mouse.

2005 – The ‘superjumbo’ Airbus A380 aircraft is taken on its maiden test flight.

2006 – In New York City, construction begins on the Freedom Tower, later renamed One World Trade Center, to replace the 2 main towers that were destroyed on 9/11.

2007 – Israeli archaeologists discover the tomb of Herod the Great, south of Jerusalem.

2011 – A ‘Super Tornado Outbreak’ devastates parts the southeastern U.S., especially Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee with 360 tornadoes killing 348 people and injuring 3100 more.

2018 – The Panmunjom Declaration is signed between North and South Korea, officially declaring their intentions to end the Korean conflict.