ON THIS DAY MAY 27

1837 Legendary Wild West figure Wild Bill Hickok is born in Troy Grove, Illinois. He was a frontiersman, lawman, legendary marksman, army scout and gambler. On August 2, 1876, he was shot dead during a poker game by a drunk in the Number Ten saloon in Deadwood, in the Dakota Territory. In his hand, he held a pair of eights and a pair of aces, which became known as the “dead man’s hand”.

1873 Heinrich Schliemann discovers Priam’s Treasure – a cache of gold and other objects believed to be from the fabled city of Troy. 1874 The first group of Dorsland trekkers leave Pretoria for the highlands of southwest Angola. (They had to traverse vast, arid areas which lent the trek its name). More than 3 000 trekkers died, with only 300 completing the journey.

1941 The pride of the Germany navy, the marauding battleship Bismarck, is sunk with great loss of life. HMS Rodney becomes the only battleship to torpedo another.

1942 Sailor Dorie Miller gets the Navy Cross for deeds at Pearl Harbor (he manned antiaircraft guns – as depicted in the movies Tora! Tora! Tora! and Pearl Harbor).

1942 Reinhard Heydrich (described as the darkest figure among the Nazi elite, and someone Hitler described as “the man with the iron heart”) is fatally wounded by Czech rebels in Prague.

1963 The son of Kikuyu farmers, Jomo Kenyatta, becomes the first prime minister of Kenya. His son, Uhuru, holds office.

1966 The 55th West German air force F-104 interceptor crashes – 292 of the 916 Starfighter fleet crash, hence the name Witwenmacher (the Widowmaker).

1988 Anti-apartheid Afrikaners meet the ANC in Frankfurt, Germany, to discuss post-apartheid South Africa.

1995 Superman actor Christopher Reeve is paralysed from the neck down after falling from his horse during a riding competition. 1999 Former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milošević is indicted for crimes against humanity.

2006 An earthquake in Java, Indonesia, kills more than 6 600 people. | THE HISTORIAN