Jan. 27, 1967

Astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee died in a flash fire during a test aboard their Apollo spacecraft. More than 60 nations signed a treaty banning the deploying of nuclear weapons in outer space.

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1756 Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria. 1880 Thomas Edison received a patent for his electric incandescent lamp. 1901 Opera composer Giuseppe Verdi died in Milan, Italy, at age 87. 1913 The musical play “The Isle O’ Dreams,” featuring the song “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” by Ernest R. Ball, Chauncey Olcott and George Graff Jr., opened in New York. 1944 During World War II, the Soviet Union announced the complete end of the deadly German siege of Leningrad, which had lasted for more than two years. 1945 During World War II, Soviet troops liberated the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland. 1951 An era of atomic testing in the Nevada desert began as an Air Force plane dropped a one-kiloton bomb on Frenchman Flat.