TODAY IN HISTORY

WEDNESDAY APR 27, 2022

1994

Former President Richard M. Nixon was remembered at an outdoor funeral service attended by all five of his successors at the Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda, California.

1521

Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed by natives in the Philippines.

1810

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote one of his most famous piano compositions, the Bagatelle in A-minor.

1813

The Battle of York took place in Upper Canada during the War of 1812 as a U.S. force defeated the British garrison in present-day Toronto before withdrawing.

1865

The steamer Sultana, carrying freed Union prisoners of war, exploded on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tennessee; death toll estimates vary from 1,500 to 2,000.

1941

German forces occupied Athens during World War II.

1973

Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray resigned after it was revealed that he’d destroyed files removed from the safe of Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt.

1978

51 construction workers plunged to their deaths when a scaffold inside a cooling tower at the Pleasants Power Station site in West Virginia fell 168feet to the ground.

1992

Russia and 12other former Soviet republics won entry into the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

2010

Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was extradited from the United States to France, where he was later convicted of laundering drug money and received a seven-year sentence.

2011

Powerful and deadly tornadoes raked the South and Midwest; more than 60 tornadoes crossed parts of Alabama, leaving about 250 people dead and thousands of others injured in the state.

2015

Rioters plunged part of Baltimore into chaos, torching a pharmacy, setting police cars ablaze and throwing bricks at officers hours after thousands attended a funeral for Freddie Gray, a Black man who died from a severe spinal injury he’d suffered in police custody; the Baltimore Orioles’ home game against the Chicago White Sox was postponed because of safety concerns.