HISTORY At A Glance

TODAY is Saturday, February 27, the 58th day of 2021. There are 307 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:

1933 Reichstag fire: Germany’s parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, is set on fire; Marinus van der Lubbe, a young Dutch Communist claims responsibility. The Nazis used the fire to solidify their power and eliminate the communists as political rivals.

1942 World War II: During the Battle of the Java Sea, an Allied strike force is defeated by a Japanese task force in the Java Sea in the Dutch East Indies.

1963 The Dominican Republic receives its first democratically elected president, Juan Bosch, since the end of the dictatorship led by Rafael Trujillo.

1991 Gulf War: U.S. President George H. W. Bush announces that “Kuwait is liberated”.

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.

2012 A section of a nine-story apartment building in the city of Astrakhan, Russia, collapses in a natural gas explosion, killing ten people and injuring at least 12 others.

2013 Five people (including the perpetrator) are killed and five others injured in a shooting at a factory in Menznau, Switzerland.