Today in History
Today is Sunday, Jan. 27, the 27th day of 2013. There are 338 days left in the year. today’s highlight in history: On Jan. 27, 1973, the Vietnam peace accords were signed in Paris. on this date:
In 1756, composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria.
In 1880, Thomas Edison received a patent for his electric incandescent lamp.
In 1888, the National Geographic Society was incorporated in Washington, D.C.
In 1913, the musical play “The Isle O’ Dreams” opened in New York; it featured the song “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” by Ernest R. Ball, Chauncey Olcott and George Graff Jr.
In 1943, some 50 bombers struck Wilhelmshaven in the first all-American air raid against Germany during World War II.
In 1944, the Soviet Union announced the complete end of the deadly German siege of Leningrad, which had lasted for more than two years.
In 1945, Soviet troops liberated the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland.
In 1951, an era of atomic testing in the Nevada desert began as an Air Force plane dropped a one-kiloton bomb on Frenchman Flat.
In 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 orbiting of nuclear weapons.
In 1977, the Vatican issued a declaration reaffirming the Roman Catholic Church’s ban on female priests.
In 1984, singer Michael Jackson suffered serious burns to his scalp when pyrotechnics set his hair on fire during the filming of a Pepsi-Cola TV commercial at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.
ten years ago: The Bush administration dismissed Iraq’s response to U.N. disarmament demands as inadequate.
Five years ago: Former Indonesian president Suharto, whose regime killed hundreds of thousands of left-wing political opponents, died in Jakarta at age 86.
one year ago: A federal judge in Seattle sentenced “Barefoot Bandit” Colton Harris-Moore to 6 1/2 years in prison for his infamous two-year, international crime spree of break-ins and boat and plane thefts.
thought for today: “Opinion is that exercise of the human will which helps us to make a decision without information.”— John Erskine, American author and educator (1879-1951).
—the associateD press