01010427 This Day In History, April 27

33 BC: Lucius Marcius Philippus, step-brother to the future emperor Augustus (see A History Of Jerusalem: Pompey And The Caesars), celebrated a triumph for his victories while serving as governor in one of the provinces of Hispania (the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula i.e. Spain and Portugal).

629: Shahrbaraz was crowned the king of the Sasanian Empire - the last Persian (Persia is known today as Iran) empire before the invention and rise of Islam.

1296: English forces under Edward I battled a Scottish army under the Earl of Athol at the Battle of Dunbar.

1509: Pope Julius II excommunicated the Italian state of Venice.

1521: Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed at age 41 by natives in the Philippines while on his pioneering round-the-world voyage.

1565: The first Spanish settlement in the Philippines was established.

1773: The English Parliament passed the Tea Act.

1810: Ludwig van Beethoven composed Fur Elise.

1813: During the War of 1812 (1812-1814), U.S. invasion forces pillaged the capital of Upper Canada during the Battle of York (present day Toronto, Ontario). The U.S. looting and burning of the Parliament Building in Toronto was later repaid by Royal Marines burning the White House in Washington, forcing U.S. President James Madison and his regime to flee the city. James Madison started the war with the publicly-stated intention to conquer Canada and subject its people to imperial rule from Washington (ironically, the U.S. very quickly adopted the imperialistic behaviour that it claimed to have been founded against).

1865: The Sultanana, a steam-powered riverboat, caught fire and burned after one of its boilers exploded. At least 1,238 of the 2,031 passengers, mostly former Union POWs, were killed.

1840: The foundation stone for new Palace of Westminster in London was laid.

1909: A group known as the "Young Turks" deposed Sultan Abdul Hamid 3 days after a liberation army had taken Constantinople.

1937: The first major aerial bombing of a civilian population took place when German warplanes, supporting General Francisco Franco's fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War, attacked the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain, killing 1,000 of its 7,000 people.

1940: Nazi Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler gave the order to establish a concentration camp at an abandoned army barracks at Oswiecim, Poland. It became the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

1941: German troops raised the Swastika over the Acropolis in Athens.

1950: Britain officially recognized the state of Israel (see A History Of Jerusalem: The British Mandate, A History Of Jerusalem: Zionism and A History Of Jerusalem: War And Peace).

1969: French voters, in a referendum on the proposed issues of regional devolution and reform of the upper house of the French Parliament, voted against Charles de Gaulle's further plans for the country; de Gaulle promptly resigned and the de Gaulle era ended.

1974: Over ten thousand protesters marched in Washington, D.C. demanding the impeachment of U.S. President Richard Nixon.

1975: Saigon was encircled by North Vietnamese troops.

1978: Afghanistan's armed forces seized power, establishing a government based on Islamic principles. President Daoud was killed and new President Nur Mohammed Taraki proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Invasions by the USSR in 1979 and the USA in 2001 followed.

1987: The U.S. barred Austrian Chancellor Kurt Waldheim diplomatic entry into the U.S. because of his alleged Nazi involvement during the Second World War. Many other Nazis were allowed into the U.S. immediately after the war however, including Wernher von Braun who was the head of Adolf Hitler's liquid-fuel rocket program that was used to bomb Britain (in which thousands of British civilians were killed). Wernher von Braun, who later admitted that he had been more than just a scientist (he was a member of both Hitler's political Nazi party and Hitler's war-criminal SS, the "schutzstaffel") worked on the development of NASA rockets (despite the opposition of those who knew the truth about "the NASA Nazi," including many Jews and Jewish holocaust survivors) and U.S. nuclear missiles.

1989: Protesting students took over Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. The protests were later crushed (literally) by Chinese tanks and troops.

2005: The European superjumbo airliner Airbus A380 made its first flight, in France.