On This Day
What Happened on December 27 in History
8 events that happened on December 27, oldest first. Every entry is written in our own words and links to its source.
Colonial America and the Revolution
1657
Residents of Flushing in New Netherland sign a remonstrance defending freedom of worship.
The townsmen protested Director-General Peter Stuyvesant's crackdown on Quakers and argued that people of any faith should be left in peace. The Flushing Remonstrance is often cited as an early forerunner of the religious freedom protected in the Bill of Rights.
Source: dc.etsu.edu
The Young Republic and the Civil War Era
1831
Charles Darwin sets sail from Plymouth aboard HMS Beagle.
After weeks of delay from bad weather, the survey ship left England with the young naturalist aboard. The nearly five-year voyage around the world supplied the observations behind his later theory of evolution by natural selection.
Source: history.com; pbs.org
The Early 1900s and the World Wars
1918
Poles in Poznań rise up against German forces, starting the Greater Poland Uprising.
After Germany's defeat in World War I, Polish volunteers and veterans took up arms to bring the province into the newly reborn Polish state. Most of the region was later awarded to Poland.
Source: history.com
1927
Show Boat, the landmark musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, opens on Broadway.
Produced by Florenz Ziegfeld at his new Ziegfeld Theatre, the show joined songs to a serious story about race and life on the Mississippi. It ran for 572 performances and changed what American musicals could do.
Source: pbs.org; web.ics.purdue.edu
1945
The International Monetary Fund comes into being as 29 nations sign its Articles of Agreement.
The fund had been designed at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference to stabilize currencies and support world trade after the war. The signing in Washington put the agreement into force.
Source: treaties.un.org
The Cold War
1949
The Netherlands formally transfers sovereignty to the United States of Indonesia.
The handover followed four years of war and diplomacy after Indonesian leaders declared independence in 1945, and agreements reached at a round table conference in The Hague. It ended Dutch colonial rule over most of the archipelago.
Source: history.state.gov; asia.unc.edu
1968
Apollo 8 splashes down in the Pacific, ending the first crewed voyage to the Moon.
Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders had orbited the Moon ten times and became the first people to see Earth rise over the lunar horizon. They were recovered by the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown.
Source: nasa.gov
The Modern Era
2007
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated after a rally in Rawalpindi.
Bhutto had returned from exile to campaign in parliamentary elections set for January 2008. As she left the rally, an attacker fired shots and a suicide bomb exploded, killing her and many others, and unrest spread across Pakistan.