ON THIS DAY
MAY 27
1837 Renowned Wild West figure Wild Bill Hickok is born in Troy Grove, Illinois. A frontiersman, lawman, marksman and army scout, he was shot dead on August 2, 1876 during a poker game by a drunk in the Number Ten saloon in Deadwood, Dakota. In his hand, was a pair of eights and a pair of aces – the ‘dead man’s hand’.
1931 Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer make the first flight into Earth’s stratosphere, from Augsburg, Germany, in a pressurised gondola borne beneath a balloon designed by Piccard. It was also a precursor to manned exploration of the ocean depths, also by Piccard.
1933 Walt Disney’s short film, Three Little Pigs is released. It goes on to win the Oscar for Best Animated film in 1934.
1941 The Germany navy’s feared battleship Bismarck, is sunk. HMS Rodney becomes the only battleship to torpedo another.
1942 US sailor Dorie Miller gets the Navy Cross for his reckless fight back at Pearl Harbor (he manned anti-aircraft guns – as depicted in the movies Tora! Tora! Tora! and Pearl Harbor.)
1942 Reinhard Heydrich (the darkest figure in the Nazi elite, and someone Hitler described as ‘the man with the iron heart’) is ambushed and fatally wounded by Czech rebels in Prague.
1963 The son of Kikuyu farmers, Jomo Kenyatta becomes Kenya’s first prime minister.
1966 The 55th West German air force F-104 interceptor crashes – 292 of the 916 Starfighter fleet crashed, hence the name Witwenmacher (The Widowmaker).
2017 Arsenal wins the FA Cup making Arsène Wenger the most successful manager in FA Cup history with seven titles.
2020 ‘I can’t breathe’: a video of African-American George Floyd’s arrest and murder, while restrained in Minneapolis police custody, shows that he was pinned to the ground by police officer Derek Chauvin’s knee for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. Chauvin’s action ignites global outrage.
2021 French President Emmanuel Macron recognizes France’s role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which killed about 800 000 people, after a meeting with Rwandan President Paul Kagame in Kigali, Rwanda.