TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Friday, Dec. 27, the 361st day of 2019. There are four days left in the year.
Today’s highlight in history
On Dec. 27, 2001, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced that Taliban and al-qaeda prisoners would be held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
On this date
In 1831, naturalist Charles Darwin set out on a round-theworld voyage aboard the HMS Beagle.
In 1904, James Barrie’s play “Peter Pan: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up” opened at the Duke of York’s Theater in London.
In 1945, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were formally established.
In 1949, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands signed an act recognizing Indonesia’s sovereignty after more than three centuries of Dutch rule.
In 1958, American physicist James Van Allen reported the discovery of a second radiation belt around Earth, in addition to one found earlier in the year.
In 1968, Apollo 8 and its three astronauts made a safe, nighttime splashdown in the Pacific.
In 1979, Soviet forces seized control of Afghanistan. President Hafizullah Amin, who was overthrown and executed, was replaced by Babrak Karmal.
In 1985, Palestinian guerrillas opened fire inside the Rome and Vienna airports; 19 victims were killed, plus four attackers who were slain by police and security personnel. American naturalist Dian Fossey, 53, who had studied gorillas in the wild in Rwanda, was found hacked to death.
In 1994, four Roman Catholic priests — three French and a Belgian — were shot to death in their rectory in Algiers, a day after French commandos killed four radicals who’d hijacked an Air France jet from Algiers to Marseille.
In 2002, a defiant North Korea ordered U.N. nuclear inspectors to leave the country and said it would restart a laboratory capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons; the U.N. nuclear watchdog said its inspectors were “staying put” for the time being. Five years ago: North Korea blamed its recent Internet outage on the United States and hurled racially charged insults at President Barack Obama over the hacking row involving the movie “The Interview.”
Today’s birthdays
Actor John Amos is 80. Musician Mick Jones (Foreigner) is
75. Singer Tracy Nelson is 75. Actor Gerard Depardieu is 71. Musician David Knopfler (Dire Straits) is 67. Actress Tovah Feldshuh is 66. Journalistturned-politician Arthur Kent is
66. Actress Maryam D’abo is 59. Actress Theresa Randle is 55. Wrestler-actor Bill Goldberg is
53. Actor Wilson Cruz is 46. Actor Masi Oka is 45. Actress Emilie de Ravin is 38. Singer Hayley Williams (Paramore) is
31.