DECEMBER 27
1512 King Ferdinand II issued the original Laws of
Burgos, which were intended to regulate the treatment of indigenous people on
Hispaniola by Spanish settlers.
1831 Naturalist Charles Darwin set out on a
round-the-world voyage aboard the HMS Beagle.
1851 Royal Navy
warship bombards Lagos. Oba of Lagos (Oba Kosoko) flees to Epe, wounded.
1904 James Barrie's play "Peter Pan: The Boy
Who Wouldn't Grow Up" opened at the Duke of York's Theater in London
1927 Leon Trotsky
was expelled from the Communist Party
1932 New York City's Radio City Music Hall opened
to the public in midtown Manhattan.
1945 28 nations signed an agreement creating the
World Bank.
1947 The original
version of the puppet character Howdy Doody made its TV debut on NBC's
"Puppet Playhouse."
1949 Queen Juliana of the Netherlands signed an act
recognizing Indonesia's sovereignty after more than three centuries of Dutch
rule.
1968 Apollo 8 and its three astronauts made a safe,
nighttime splashdown in the Pacific.
1970 The musical
play "Hello, Dolly!" closed on Broadway after a run of 2,844
performances.
1975 The Sex
Discrimation Act came into force
1979 Russia
invaded Afghanistan
1984 Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher was voted 'Woman of the Year', on Radio 4's 'Today'
programme
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.
1989 Egypt
resumed full diplomatic relations with Syria, after a ten year break
2000 Coordinated
rebel assaults in Karbala, Iraq, killed 13 people, including six coalition
soldiers
2007 Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was
assassinated during a suicide bomb attack in Pakistan following a campaign
rally.
2008 Israel bombed security sites in Hamas-ruled
Gaza in retaliation for rocket fire aimed at civilians in southern Israeli
towns
2012 Indian
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged to take action to protect the nation's
women while the 23-year-old young victim of a gang rape on a New Delhi bus 11
days earlier was flown to Singapore for treatment of severe internal injuries
