247Philip the Arab marks the millennium of Rome with a celebration of the ludi saeculares.
395Emperor Arcadius marries Aelia Eudoxia, daughter of the Frankish general Flavius Bauto. She becomes one of the more powerful Roman empresses of Late Antiquity.
711Islamic conquest of Hispania: Moorish troops led by Tariq ibn Ziyad land at Gibraltar to begin their invasion of the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus).
1296First War of Scottish Independence: John Balliol's Scottish army is defeated by an English army commanded by John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey at the Battle of Dunbar.
1522A Spanish-Imperial army defeats French-Venetian army in the battle of Bicocca. The battle marks the end of dominance of Swiss mercenaries on the battlefield and is one of the first where firearms play a decisive role.
1539Official founding of the city of Bogotá, New Granada (nowadays Colombia), by Nikolaus Federmann and Sebastián de Belalcázar.
1565Cebu is established becoming the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines.
1595The relics of Saint Sava are incinerated in Belgrade on the Vračar plateau by Ottoman Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha; the site of the incineration is now the location of the Church of Saint Sava, one of the largest Orthodox churches in the world
1650The Battle of Carbisdale: A Royalist army from Orkney invades mainland Scotland but is defeated by a Covenanter army.
1667Blind and impoverished, John Milton sells Paradise Lost to a printer for £10, so that it could be entered into the Stationers' Register.
1945World War II: The last German formations withdraw from Finland to Norway. The Lapland War and thus, World War II in Finland, comes to an end and the Raising the Flag on the Three-Country Cairn photograph is taken.
1945World War II: Benito Mussolini is arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, while attempting escape disguised as a German soldier.
1953Operation Moolah offers $50,000 to any pilot who defects with a fully mission-capable Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 to South Korea. The first pilot was to receive $100,000.
1967Expo 67 officially opens in Montreal, Quebec, Canada with a large opening ceremony broadcast around the world. It opens to the public the next day.
1974One hundred nine people are killed in a plane crash near Pulkovo Airport.
1976Thirty-seven people are killed when American Airlines Flight 625 crashes at Cyril E. King Airport in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.
1978John Ehrlichman, a former aide to U.S. President Richard Nixon, is released from the Federal Correctional Institution, Safford, Arizona, after serving 18 months for Watergate-related crimes.
1978The Saur Revolution begins in Afghanistan, ending the following morning with the murder of Afghan President Mohammed Daoud Khan and the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
1978Willow Island disaster: In the deadliest construction accident in United States history, 51 construction workers are killed when a cooling tower under construction collapses at the Pleasants Power Station in Willow Island, West Virginia.
1986The city of Pripyat and surrounding areas are evacuated due to the Chernobyl disaster.
1987The U.S. Department of Justice bars Austrian President Kurt Waldheim (and his wife, Elisabeth, who had also been a Nazi) from entering the US, charging that he had aided in the deportations and executions of thousands of Jews and others as a German Army officer during World War II.
1989The April 27 demonstrations, student-led protests responding to the April 26 Editorial, during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
1993Most of the Zambia national football team lose their lives in a plane crash off Libreville, Gabon en route to Dakar, Senegal to play a 1994 FIFA World Cup qualifying match against Senegal.
1994South African general election: The first democratic general election in South Africa, in which black citizens could vote. The Interim Constitution comes into force.This marked the end of Apartheid.
2005Airbus A380 aircraft has its maiden test flight.
2007Estonian authorities remove the Bronze Soldier, a SovietRed Army war memorial in Tallinn, amid political controversy with Russia.
2007Israeli archaeologists discover the tomb of Herod the Great south of Jerusalem.
2011The 2011 Super Outbreak devastates parts of the Southeastern United States, especially the states of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee. Two hundred five tornadoes touched down on April 27 alone, killing more than 300 and injuring hundreds more.
2012At least four explosions hit the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk with at least 27 people injured.
2018The Panmunjom Declaration is signed between North and South Korea, officially declaring their intentions to end the Korean conflict.
2026A train crash kills at least 15 people and injures 84 others near Jakarta, Indonesia.
Nacimientos (187)
85 a. C.Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, Roman politician and general (died 43 BC)
1468Frederick Jagiellon, Primate of Poland (died 1503)
1556François Béroalde de Verville, French writer (died 1626)
1564Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland (died 1632)
1593Mumtaz Mahal, Mughal empress buried at the Taj Mahal (died 1631)
1650Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Kassel, Queen Consort of Denmark (1670–1699) (died 1714)
1654Charles Blount, English deist and philosopher (died 1693)
1701Charles Emmanuel III, King of Sardinia (died 1773)
1718Thomas Lewis, Irish-born American surveyor and lawyer (died 1790)
1748Adamantios Korais, Greek-French philosopher and scholar (died 1833)
1755Marc-Antoine Parseval, French mathematician and theorist (died 1836)
1759Mary Wollstonecraft, English philosopher, historian, and novelist (died 1797)
1788Charles Robert Cockerell, English architect, archaeologist, and writer (died 1863)
1791Samuel Morse, American painter and inventor, co-invented the Morse code (died 1872)
1812William W. Snow, American lawyer and politician (died 1886)
1812Friedrich von Flotow, German composer (died 1883)
1820Herbert Spencer, English biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and philosopher (died 1903)