HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Friday, October 27, the 300th day of 2017. There are 65 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1958 – Iskander Mirza, the first President of Pakistan, is deposed in a bloodless coup d’état by General Ayub Khan, who had been appointed the enforcer of martial law by Mirza 20 days earlier. 1962 – Major Rudolf Anderson of the United States Air Force becomes the only direct human casualty of the Cuban missile crisis when his U-2 reconnaissance airplane is shot down in Cuba by a Soviet-supplied SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile. 1967 – Catholic priest Philip Berrigan and others of the ‘Baltimore Four’ protest the Vietnam War by pouring blood on Selective Service records. 1971 – The Democratic Republic of the Congo is renamed
Zaire. 1979 – Saint Vincent and the Grenadines gains its
independence from the United Kingdom. 1981 – The Soviet submarine U 137 runs aground on the east
coast of Sweden. 1986 – The British government suddenly deregulates financial markets, leading to a total restructuring of the way in which they operate in the country, in an event now referred to as the Big Bang. 1988 – Ronald Reagan decides to tear down the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow because of Soviet listening devices in the building structure. 1991 – Turkmenistan achieves independence from the Soviet
Union. 1992 – United States Navy radioman Allen R. Schindler, Jr. is brutally murdered by shipmate Terry M. Helvey for being gay, precipitating first military, then national, debate about gays in the military that resulted in the United States “Don’t ask, don’t tell” military policy. 1994 – Gliese 229B is the first Substellar Mass Object to be
unquestionably identified. 1995 – Former Prime Minister of Italy Bettino Craxi is
convicted in absentia of corruption. 1997 – October 27, 1997 mini-crash: Stock markets around the world crash because of fears of a global economic meltdown. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets 554.26 points to 7,161.15. 1999 – Gunmen open fire in the Armenian Parliament, killing Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan, Parliament Chairman Karen Demirchyan, and six other members. 2005 – Riots begin in Paris after the deaths of two Muslim
teenagers.