November 27

511 Clovis I, the first king of the Franks to unite all of the Frankish tribes under one ruler died on November 27, 511. He succeeded his father Childeric I in 481 as King of the Salian Franks, one of two main groups of Frankish tribes. Clovis achieved many military victories and by his death his kingdom extended to the Pyrenees. closely resembling geographically modern France. Indeed, he is considered to be the founder of France.

Clovis roi des Francs by François-Louis Dejuinne (1786–1844) Wikipedia 

1095 In 1095 The Byzantine emperor Alexius Comneus was threatened by Muslim advances, so he appealed to the Pope for help. On November 27, 1095 at the Council of Clermont Pope Urban II called on the nobility of Western Europe to join on a crusade to retake Jerusalem. The First Crusade was launched the following year. After a siege the Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099 but in a horrendous massacre almost every Muslim as well as many Jews and even eastern Christians were slaughtered.

1826 English chemist John Walker had developed an interest in trying to find a means of obtaining fire easily. He experimented with several chemical mixtures which were already known to ignite by a sudden explosion and made the discovery on November 27, 1826 that when a stick coated in potassium chlorate and antimony sulphide was brushed across stone, it created a flame. Walker appreciated the practical value of the discovery, and started making the first friction matches.

Sulphur-head matches, 1828, lit by dipping into a bottle of phosphorus

1835 Londoners James Pratt (1805–1835), also known as John Pratt, and John Smith (1795-1835)  were arrested in August 1835 after being observed having sex in the room of another man, William Bonill. Pratt and Smith were hanged in front of Newgate Prison on the morning of November 27, 1835. They were the last people executed for sodomy in England.

1852 Ada Lovelace died on November 27, 1852. The only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron and his wife Anne Isabella Milbanke, her mother had Ada tutored in mathematics in the hope she would not exhibit any of the poetic tendencies of her father.She is chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine and is often described as the world's first computer programmer.

1906 The Costa Rica flag was officially adopted on November 27, 1906. It was updated to reflect concurrent modifications to the national coat of arms in 1964 and 1998. The flag of Thailand is similar to the Costa Rican flag, except the blue and red stripes are reversed.

1910 New York's Pennsylvania Station opened to traffic on November 27, 1910. It was an ornate railway station designed by McKim, Mead, and White and considered a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style. The station was built to accommodate the Pennsylvania Railroad's (PRR) expanding passenger rail network, and it served as the main hub for intercity and suburban train travel to and from New York City for over half a century.

1915 Britain's first three policewomen started work in Grantham, Lincolnshire on November 27, 1914. In August 1915 Edith Smith was appointed the first woman police constable in England with full power of arrest. She received 28 shillings (£1.40) a week. 

1924 The first Macy's Thanksgiving Parade took place on November 27, 1924. The parade was organized by store employees and featured animals—including bears and elephants—borrowed from the Central Park Zoo. Santa arrived on a float in the form of a sled driven by reindeer over a mountain of ice. Once he was seated on a throne, the store's Christmas windows were unveiled.

1942 Born in Seattle, Washington on November 27, 1942, Jimi Hendrix was one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music. He was primarily of African American descent, with Irish and Cherokee ancestors. Hendrix  started his musical career by playing a simple kitchen broom, before finding his first proper instrument, a one-stringed ukulele, while clearing trash from a woman's home. Entirely self-taught, he acquired his first acoustic guitar, for $5 aged 15.

1944 An explosion at a Royal Air Force ammunition dump in Staffordshire killed 70 people on November 27, 1944. Between 3,500 and 4,000 tonnes of ordnance, mostly high explosive (HE)-filled bombs, exploded at the RAF Fauld underground munitions storage depot in the largest non-nuclear explosion in the United Kingdom.

1968 Penny Ann Early became the first woman to play major professional basketball, when she came on during a time out for the Kentucky Colonels in an ABA game against the Los Angeles Stars on November 27, 1968. At just 5'3" and 112 pounds, Early was also the smallest pro basketball player ever.

1970 An assassination attempt was made on Pope Paul VI on November 27, 1970, at Manila International Airport in the Philippine by a Bolivian painter named Benjamin Mendoza. During the attack, Mendoza lunged at Pope Paul VI with a knife but was quickly subdued by security personnel. The Pope was unharmed, and his heavily starched cape is said to have played a role in protecting him from the blade, as it acted as a barrier. 

1971 Nottingham Forest’s proud 32-year run of having no players sent off ended with Sammy Chapman’s red card in their November 27, 1971 football match against Leeds. Nottingham Forest would avoid another sending off until the 1973-74 season, when four players were pointed off the pitch by the referee.

1975 Writer and TV personality Ross McWhirter, was shot dead by an IRA gang on November 27, 1975. He had offered a reward of £50,000 for information that led to the arrest of IRA bombers.
Twin brothers Ross and Norris McWhirter were co-founders of The Guinness Book of Records, which they wrote and annually updated together between 1955 and 1975.

1982 Tom Hanks got his first big break starring in the TV sitcom Bosom Buddies. It aired for two seasons on ABC from November 27, 1980, to March 27, 1982, and although the ratings were never strong, television critics gave the program high marks. A guest appearance on a 1982 episode of Happy Days prompted director Ron Howard to ask Hanks to read for a supporting role in the 1984 movie Splash. Hanks ended up landing the lead and it proved to be his break-out role.

2014 Australian Test cricketer Phillip Hughes died on November 27, 2014 from an injury he sustained while playing a Sheffield Shield game for South Australia against New South Wales two days earlier. He had accumulated 63 runs when he was hit on the neck by a bouncer bowled by Sean Abbott.

2017 Zhong Zhong, born November 27, 2017 is a crab-eating macaque created by Chinese scientists through somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). She is the first captive non-human primate born through assisted reproduction, a groundbreaking scientific achievement that has implications for the conservation of critically endangered species.