TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2018

On this day in history:

1700 - Foreigners first arrived on the Pacific island of New Britain.

1788 - The first convict is hanged in the colony of New South Wales.

1861 - In Warsaw, Russian troops fired on a crowd protesting Russian rule over Poland. Five protesting marchers were killed in the incident.

1900 - In South Africa, the British received an unconditional surrender from Boer Gen Piet Cronje at Paardeberg.

1902 - Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant is executed for the war crime of murdering Boer prisoners. 1933 - The Reichstag, Germany’s parliament building in Berlin, was set on fire. The Nazis accused Communist for the fire.

1949 - Chaim Weizmann became the first Israeli president.

1997 - The Gang-gang cockatoo is adopted as the faunal emblem of the Australian Capital Territory.

1997 - In Ireland, divorce became legal.

1998 - Britain’s House of Lords agreed to give a monarch’s first-born daughter the same claim to the throne as any first-born son. This was the end to 1000 years of male preference.

1999 - Colin Prescot and Andy Elson set a new hot air balloon endurance record when they had been aloft for 233 hours and 55 minutes. The two were in the process of trying to circumnavigate the Earth. 1999 - Nigeria returned to civilian rule when Gen Olusegun Obasanjo became the country’s first elected president since August of 1983. 2002 - Godhra train burning: A Muslim mob torches a train returning from Ayodhya, killing 59 Hindu pilgrims.

2004 - A bombing of a Superferry by Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines’ worst terrorist attack kills 116.

2010 - An earthquake measuring 8.8 on the moment magnitude scale strikes central parts of Chile leaving over 500 victims, and thousands injured. The quake triggered a tsunami which struck Hawaii shortly after. 2015 - Assassination of Boris Nemtsov occurs.