May 8

June 27

1743 George II of Great Britain and his allies defeated the French in Dettingen, Bavaria on June 27, 1743 during the War of the Austrian Succession: It was the last time that a British monarch personally led his troops into battle. The battle itself was part of a larger campaign in which British and Austrian forces sought to halt the French advance in the region. 

George II at the Battle of Dettingen  by John Wootton

1829 The founder of the Smithsonian museum, James Smithson, was a British scientist who died on June 27, 1829. He willed his fortune to his nephew and in the event his nephew died with no heirs, to the US government to found an "Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men," having never visited the US.

1844 On June 27, 1844, an armed mob stormed Carthage Jail, Illinois where Mormon founder Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were being held for inciting a riot. Hyrum was killed instantly with a shot to the face. Smith was shot multiple times before falling out the window, crying, "Oh Lord my God!" He died shortly after hitting the ground. Joseph Smith was buried in Nauvoo, and is interred there at the Smith Family Cemetery.

1851 lithograph of Smith's body being mutilated. (Library of Congress).

1865 The pin-tumbler lock or Yale lock was invented in 1844 by lock shop owner Linus Yale Sr, whose name still adorns billions of keys. In 1850 his son, Linus Yale, Jr. joined him at the lock shop and began working on improving his father’s pin tumbler lock. Linus Yale, Jr.'s June 27, 1865 patent for a pin-tumbler lock and key was a drastic improvement over previous models, and became the basis for pin-tumbler locks to this day.

1871 The yen currency was officially adopted by the Japanese Meiji government in an Act signed on June 27, 1871. The Yen's name comes from the Japanese word "えん (en)," which literally means "round." The name was chosen to represent the round shape of the coins that were used as currency.

1880 Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Helen lost her sight and hearing at 19 months, probably from scarlet fever or meningitis. At the turn of the 20th century blindness was a forbidden subject in women's magazines because so many cases were related to venereal disease. However after Helen Keller graduated with honors from Radcliffe College of Harvard University in 1904, she became a crusader for the handicapped.

1894 On about 11 o'clock in the morning on June 27, 1894, Latvian immigrant Annie Kopchovsky, known as Annie Londonderry, set off on a 19kg (41lb) women’s bicycle on from the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill, Boston. She had decided to settle a wager about whether a woman could cycle around the world. 15 months later. Kopchovsky arrived in Chicago and collected her $10,000 prize. Kopchovsky only learned how to ride a bike two days prior to setting off.


1896 The first news-film shot in Britain was shot June 27, 1896 and showed the arrival of the future Edward VII and his wife at the Cardiff exhibition. Permission was granted to shoot the Royal party on the proviso that he himself was not seen.

1898 On April 24, 1895, Captain Joshua Slocum set sail from Boston, Massachusetts in his 36′ 9″ (11.2 m) gaff rigged sloop oyster boat named Spray. More than three years later, on June 27, 1898, he returned to Newport, Rhode Island, having circumnavigated the globe. He was the first man to sail single-handedly around the world, but Slocum's return went almost unnoticed. The Spanish–American War, which had begun two months earlier, dominated the headlines.


1899 On June 27, 1899 a 13-year-old schoolboy cricketer A. E. J. Collins scored 628 runs not out in a junior school house cricket match at Clifton College, Bristol; which was the highest-ever recorded score in cricket until 2016., when 15-year-old Pranav Dhanawade scored 1,009 not out for K. C. Gandhi High School against Arya Gurukul School.

1905 The Russian battleship Potemkin was a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet. The crew's rebellion against the officers on June 27, 1905 (during that year's revolution) is now viewed as a first step towards the Russian Revolution of 1917. After the mutineers sought asylum in Constanța, Romania, and the Russians recovered the ship, her name was changed to Panteleimon.


1954 The world's first nuclear power station was opened at Obninsk near Moscow. It began producing electricity on June 27, 1954. The plant remained in operation between 1954 and 2002, although its production of electricity for the grid ceased in 1959; thereafter it functioned as a research and isotope production plant only.

1967 A Scot, John Shepherd-Barron, invented the ATM. Managing director of a security printing firm, De La Rue Instruments; he was lying in the bath when the idea of a cash dispenser occurred to him. Barclays Bank were impressed with Shepherd-Barron’s idea and the first DACS (De La Rue Automatic Cash System) was fitted outside the bank's branch in Enfield, north London on June 27, 1967. Comic actor Reg Varney was the first person to use the cash machine (see below).


1967 On June 27, 1967 Mick Jagger found himself being driven to court in a blue Continental Bentley on a drugs charge. Three and a half hours later, the Rolling Stones frontman was driven off to Lewes Jail in an austere grey police van. Jagger had been found guilty of unauthorized possession of pep pills and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. On appeal Jagger's sentence was amended to a conditional discharge.

1976 The Ebola disease is thought to have originated in fruit bats. The first identifiable case of the Ebola virus in humans occurred when a storekeeper in a cotton factory in Nzara, Sudan. fell ill on June 27, 1976. He was hospitalized but died ten days later. The Sudan outbreak infected 284 people and killed 151 between June and November 1976. The naming of the virus did not occur until some months later when a second outbreak began in a small rural village near the Congo's Ebola River.


1997 The Aldermen of South Padre Island, Texas, a tourist resort in the Gulf of Mexico, voted on June 27, 1997 to make the wearing of ties illegal. The resolution stated that the tie was "detrimental to the welfare of South Padre Island and its visitors," and that it "sometimes causes serious regression back to their humdrum and ordinary business lives." 

2008 Omkari Panwar, a 70-year-old grandmother from India gave birth to twins on June 27, 2008, setting a then-world record for the oldest mother. Omkari delivered a boy and a girl after she underwent IVF treatment, which cost 350,000 rupees (£4,375 or $9,000) - a small fortune in India. To pay for it Charan mortgaged his land, sold his buffalo, spent his life savings and took out a loan.



2008 Bill Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect for himself. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work. Instead he would be devoting most of his time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates last full-time day at Microsoft was on June 27, 2008.

2008 Tony Blair won his third UK general election in 2005. By then he was the Labour Party's longest-serving Prime Minister and the only person to have led the party to three consecutive general election victories.  Blair resigned as British Prime Minister on June 27, 2007 and on the same day took up the appointment of the official Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East.

2015 The largest ever movie poster had an area of 4,793.65 m² (51,598.21 ft²) and was achieved by Global United Media Company Pvt Ltd (India) in Kochi, India, on June 27. 2015. It was created for Baahubali: The Beginning, a 2015 Indian bilingual epic historical fiction film directed by S. S. Rajamouli.


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