Jan 27 in History

98AD — Trajan, 44, succeeds his adoptive father Nerva as Roman emperor. The Roman Empire attains its maximum territorial extent and an era of peace and prosperity in the Mediterranean world under his 19-year rule (until his death on August 8 117AD). His philanthropic rule, public building programmes and social welfare policies earn him the reputation as the second of the Five Good Emperors.

1302 — Dante (Alighieri), Italian poet (“Divine Comedy”), politician and pharmacist, is exiled from his birthplace Florence over his political affiliation. In the late Middle Ages most poetry is written in Latin and thus only accessible to the most educated readers. Dante defends the use of the vernacular in literature. 1606 — The trial of Guy Fawkes and seven other conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot (to blow up the House of Lords during the opening of parliament on November 5 1605) starts in Westminster Hall, London, and culminates in the execution of Fawkes and three others on the 31st.

1756 — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is born in Salzburg, Austria. He starts composing minuets at age five.

1820 — A Russian expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev discovers the Antarctic continent (the sought-after Terra Australis).

1832 — Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” under the pen name Lewis Carroll, is born in Cheshire, England.

1888 — The National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C. The National Geographic Magazine is first published on September 22.

1918 — “Tarzan of the Apes”, the first Tarzan film (silent, with English intertitles) with Elmo Lincoln in the lead role, premieres in NYC.

1945 — US Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, 25, taken prisoner at the Battle of the Bulge and the senior non-commissioned officer responsible for the 1,275 US POWs at the Stalag IX-A camp Ziegenhain, Germany, orders his men to refuse Nazi instructions to separate out Jewish soldiers: “We are all Jews here.” 1945 — The Soviet Army’s 322nd Rifle Division arrives at Auschwitz in Poland and finds the Nazi concentration camp and crematorium. The Nazis had evacuated the facility and tried to destroy evidence of one of the world’s most horrific slaughters. The soldiers report finding some 7,000 of “the weakest and most infirm inmates”, and come across more than 600 mouldering corpses.

1948 — Mikhail Baryshnikov, ballet dancer, is born in Riga, Soviet Union (Latvia). On June 29 1974, while on tour in Canada with the Mariinsky Ballet, he defects and requests political asylum in Toronto.