On This Day
What Happened on January 27 in History
9 events that happened on January 27, oldest first. Every entry is written in our own words and links to its source.
Colonial America and the Revolution
1785
Georgia's General Assembly charters the University of Georgia, the first state-chartered university in the U.S.
The legislature had already set aside 40,000 acres to endow a public college. Abraham Baldwin, a Yale graduate, became the school's first president, and the university later settled in Athens.
Source: history.com; news.uga.edu
The Young Republic and the Civil War Era
1862
President Lincoln issues General War Order No. 1, ordering a Union advance on all fronts.
Frustrated by delays, Lincoln set February 22, 1862, as the day for a general movement of Union land and naval forces against the Confederacy. The order showed his growing impatience with General George McClellan.
Source: history.com; presidency.ucsb.edu
1880
Thomas Edison receives a U.S. patent for his incandescent electric lamp.
Patent No. 223,898 covered a lamp with a carbon filament glowing inside a glass bulb, the design Edison had demonstrated in late 1879. It became one of the most famous of his more than 1,000 patents.
Source: archives.gov; history.com
The Early 1900s and the World Wars
1944
Soviet forces break the German siege of Leningrad after nearly 900 days.
The blockade began in September 1941 and cut the city off from most supplies. Hundreds of thousands of residents died of starvation, disease and shelling before the siege lines were permanently broken.
Source: history.com
1945
Soviet troops liberate the Auschwitz concentration and death camp in occupied Poland.
Days earlier the SS had forced most prisoners on death marches west, leaving several thousand sick and starving inmates behind. More than a million people, the vast majority of them Jews, were murdered at Auschwitz, and the date is now International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Source: history.com; encyclopedia.ushmm.org
The Cold War
1951
The first atomic bomb test takes place at the new Nevada Test Site.
A one-kiloton device was dropped from an Air Force bomber and exploded over Frenchman Flat as the first shot of Operation Ranger. The site went on to host hundreds of nuclear tests.
Source: history.com; nnss.gov
1967
Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee die in a fire inside their Apollo 1 capsule.
Fire swept the command module during a preflight test on the launch pad at Cape Kennedy, Florida, weeks before what was to be the first crewed Apollo flight. All three astronauts were killed.
Source: nasa.gov; archive.nytimes.com
1967
The Outer Space Treaty opens for signature in Washington, London and Moscow.
The agreement bars nations from placing nuclear weapons in orbit and from claiming the Moon or other celestial bodies as their territory. It remains the basic framework of international space law.
Source: legal.un.org
1973
The Paris Peace Accords are signed to end American involvement in the Vietnam War.
The United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam and the Viet Cong signed the agreement, which called for a cease-fire, the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the release of prisoners of war. Fighting between the Vietnamese sides resumed soon after.
Source: history.com