#TodayInHistory – January 27
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January 27 – Some important events on this day
98 👉🏼 Trajan becomes Roman Emperor after the death of Nerva.
1591 👉🏼 Scottish schoolmaster Dr. John Fian burned for witchcraft at Castle Hill, Edinburgh by order King James VI. Part of the Berwick witch trials.
1820 👉🏼 Russian Antarctic Expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev discover the continent of Antarctica.
The first Russian Antarctic Expedition 1819-1821 by led by Baltic German Fabian Gottieb von Bellingshausen, a Russian naval officer who captained the ship Vostok with his second-in-command Mikhail Lazarev aboard the Miry.
They were not only the first to cross the Antarctic circle since Captain Cook, they went on be the first to sight Antarctic in January 1820 and to make two circumnavigations of the continent. Bellingshausen is responsible for naming a number of landmarks in Antarctica including Peter I Island and the Alexander Coast.
1825 👉🏼 US Congress approves Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), clearing the way for the forced relocation of the Eastern Indian tribes via the “Trail of Tears”.
It was US President Andrew Jackson’s policy to removing Native Americans from their ancestral lands to make way for settlers and speculators that led to the infamous Trail of Tears in the 1830s.
The Cherokees of Georgia initially tried legal means to resist the policy and actually won their case in the US Supreme Court. However President Jackson refused to acknowledge the judgement and 20,000 were eventually marched west at gunpoint. A quarter of their number would perish on the journey.
1880 👉🏼 Thomas Edison patents electric incandescent lamp
1888 👉🏼 The National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C. for “the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge”
1924 👉🏼 Lenin placed in Mausoleum in Red Square, Moscow
1941 👉🏼 Peruvian ambassador Ricardo Rivera-Schreiber warns American Ambassador of Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor
1944 👉🏼 Siege of Leningrad lifted by the Soviets after 880 days and more than 2 million Russians killed
1945 👉🏼 Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz and Birkenau Concentration Camps in Poland.
On this day, Soviet troops enter Auschwitz, Poland, freeing the survivors of the network of concentration camps—and finally revealing to the world the depth of the horrors perpetrated there.
Auschwitz was really a group of camps, designated I, II, and III, and there were also 40 smaller “satellite” camps. It was at Auschwitz II, at Birkenau, established in October 1941, that the SS created a complex, monstrously orchestrated killing ground: 300 prison barracks, four “bathhouses” in which prisoners were gassed, corpse cellars, and cremating ovens. Thousands of prisoners were also used for medical experiments overseen and performed by the camp doctor, Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death.”
The Red Army had been advancing deeper into Poland since mid-January. Having liberated Warsaw and Krakow, Soviet troops headed for Auschwitz. In anticipation of the Soviet arrival, SS officers began a murder spree in the camps, shooting sick prisoners and blowing up crematoria in a desperate attempt to destroy the evidence of their crimes. When the Red Army finally broke through, Soviet soldiers encountered 648 corpses and more than 7,000 starving camp survivors. There were also six storehouses filled with hundreds of thousands of women’s dresses, men’s suits and shoes that the Germans did not have time to burn.
1967 👉🏼 A fire in the Apollo 1 Command Module kills astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee during a launch rehearsal
1973 👉🏼 US & North Vietnam’s William Rogers & Nguyen Duy Trinh sign cease-fire, ending longest US war and military draft
1888 👉🏼 National Geographic Society founded
2019 👉🏼 Tornado strikes Havana, Cuba, killing three and injuring 172
2019 👉🏼 Landslide kills 15 at a wedding party in a hotel in Abancay, Peru
