April 27 is:
Babe Ruth Day
National Prime Rib Day
Tell a Story Day
Morse Code Day
Anniversary of the death of Ferdinand Magellan in 1521, Portuguese navigator, first to circumnavigate the earth.
The blind and impoverished John Milton sold the copyright of Paradise Lost for £10 in 1667.
Birthday of Samuel Finley Breece Morse (1791), American inventor of the electric telegraph and the Morse code.
April 27, 1805, First Barbary War: United States Marines and Berbers attack the Tripolitan city of Derna (The “shores of Tripoli” part of the Marines’ hymn). See benneynlinda.com
From the Halls of Montezuma
To the Shores of Tripoli;
We fight our country’s battles
In the air, on land and sea;
First to fight for right and freedom
And to keep our honor clean;
We are proud to claim the title
of United States Marines.Our flag’s unfurled to every breeze
From dawn to setting sun;
We have fought in ev’ry clime and place
Where we could take a gun;
In the snow of far-off Northern lands
And in sunny tropic scenes;
You will find us always on the job–
The United States Marines.Here’s health to you and to our Corps
Which we are proud to serve
In many a strife we’ve fought for life
And never lost our nerve;
If the Army and the Navy
Ever look on Heaven’s scenes;
They will find the streets are guarded
By United States Marines.
In 1810, Beethoven composed Für Elise.
War of 1812: On April 27, 1813, American troops under the command of General Pike captured the capital of Upper Canada in the Battle of York (present day Toronto, Canada). Pike was killed.
Birthday of Ulysses Simpson Grant 1822, eighteenth president of the United States. Hiram Ulysses Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio. He attended West Point Military Academy where his admission papers wrongly named him U. S. Grant. His nickname at the Academy became “Sam”. Some thought the “S” stood for Simpson, Grant’s mother’s maiden name, but, according to Grant, the “S.” did not stand for anything. Upon graduation from the academy he adopted the name “Ulysses S. Grant”.
On April 27, 1840, the foundation stone for new Palace of Westminster, London, was laid by wife of Sir Charles Barry.
American President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus on April 27, 1861.
On April 27, 1865, the steamboat SS Sultana , carrying more than 2100 passengers, exploded and sank in the Mississippi River, killing 1,700, most of whom were Union survivors of the Andersonville and Cahaba Prisons. Although designed with a capacity of only 376 passengers, she was carrying 2,137 when three of the boat’s four boilers exploded and she burned to the waterline and sank near Memphis, Tennessee. The disaster was overshadowed in the press by events surrounding the end of the American Civil War, including the killing of President Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth just the day before, and no one was ever held accountable for the tragedy.