NOW & THEN
27 MARCH
1703: Russia’s Czar Peter the Great founded city of St Petersburg.
1802: Peace of Amiens between Britain and France, which achieved complete pacification of Europe.
1871: The first rugby international was played, Scotland defeating England in Edinburgh.
1914: The first citrated blood transfusion was given in a Brussels hospital. Citrate, introduced by a Belgian surgeon, A Hustin, enabled blood to be bottled without clotting.
1942: British commandos made a dawn raid on the French port of St Nazaire, in which an old destroyer full of explosives, the Campbeltown, rammed the main dock gate and put it out of action for the rest of the war.
1943: Aircraft carrier HMS Dasher blew up and sank off Arran, with the loss of more than 350 crew members. There were 149 survivors.
1945: The last of more than 1,000 V2 rockets that fell on Britain in the Second World War exploded at Orpington, Kent.
1961: Britain’s first women traffic wardens went on duty in Leicester.
1964: United Nations peace force under India’s General Gyani took over in Cyprus.
1964: Earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale struck Alaska, claiming 118 lives.
1966: World Cup football trophy, which had been stolen from Central Hall, Westminster, on 20 March, was found under a hedge in a London garden by a man walking his dog, Pickles.
1970: Severe earthquake struck western Turkey, killing at least 1,087 people and leaving 90,000 homeless.
1977: Two aircraft collided and exploded in fog on airstrip at Los Rodeos Airport at Tenerife, Canary Islands, with 582 deaths.
1991: Commandos stormed a Singapore Airlines jet, killing four Pakistani hijackers who had threatened to set fire to the aircraft and its 120 passengers.
1992: Rosemary Aberdour – self-styled “Lady Aberdour” – was jailed for four years at the Old Bailey for stealing £2.7 million from a hospital charity.
1994: The Eurofighter took its first flight in Manching, Germany.
1995: President Nelson Mandela dismissed his estranged wife Winnie from South Africa’s government.
The Food and Drug Administration approved Viagra for use as a treatment for male impotence.
2004: HMS Scylla, a decommissioned Leander class frigate, was sunk as an artificial reef off Cornwall.
2007: Police in Scotland said that there were 17 race-hate crimes in the country each day.
2008: The first day of operations at Heathrow Airport’s new £4.3 billion Terminal 5 descended into farce when flights were cancelled due to a series of problems including faulty lifts, broken escalators and the complete collapse of the baggage system.
2009: The rare 29-year-old whisky Port Ellen, which comes from a distillery in Islay that has been closed for 26 years, won the award for the world’s best single malt.