1927

Events in 1927 108

• 1840 – 1927 Charlotte of Belgium (1840-1927) Died 19 January 1927, aged 86 Charlotte of Belgium was Empress of Mexico as the wife of Maximilian I. She suffered a mental breakdown in 1866 and lived in seclusion in Belgium for six decades after his execution.
• 1842 – 1927 Georg Brandes (1842-1927) Died 19 February 1927, aged 85 Georg Brandes was a Danish critic who led the Modern Breakthrough, a movement towards realism in Scandinavian literature. He was one of the most influential literary scholars in Europe in his time.
• 1855 – 1927 Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927) Died 9 January 1927, aged 71 Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a British-born writer who settled in Germany. His racialist book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century strongly influenced pan-German and Nazi ideology.
• 1857 – 1927 Vladimir Bekhterev (1857-1927) Died 24 December 1927, aged 70 Vladimir Bekhterev was a Russian neurologist who founded the Psychoneurological Institute in Saint Petersburg and did pioneering work on reflexes and brain anatomy. He died suddenly in Moscow, reportedly soon after examining Stalin.
• 1858 – 1927 Kang Youwei (1858-1927) Died 31 March 1927, aged 69 Kang Youwei was a Chinese scholar and reformer who led the Hundred Days' Reform of 1898 under the Guangxu Emperor. When the reforms were crushed he fled abroad, and he remained a constitutional monarchist for the rest of his life.
• 1859 – 1927 Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) Died 14 June 1927, aged 68 Jerome K. Jerome was an English humorist and playwright. He is best known for the comic novel Three Men in a Boat (1889).
• 1859 – 1927 Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) Died 2 October 1927, aged 68 Svante Arrhenius was a Swedish chemist who won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his theory of electrolytic dissociation. In 1896 he made one of the first calculations of how carbon dioxide warms the Earth.
• 1864 – 1927 Ion I. C. Brătianu (1864-1927) Died 24 November 1927, aged 63 Ion I. C. Brătianu led the National Liberal Party and served five times as Prime Minister of Romania. He represented Romania at the Paris Peace Conference and was the leading figure in the creation of Greater Romania.
• 1865 – 1927 Ferdinand I of Romania (1865-1927) Died 20 July 1927, aged 61 Ferdinand I was King of Romania from 1914. He led the country through the First World War, and during his reign Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina were united with Romania to form Greater Romania.
• 1868 – 1927 Constance Markievicz (1868-1927) Died 15 July 1927, aged 59 Constance Markievicz was an Irish revolutionary and a commander in the 1916 Easter Rising. In 1918 she became the first woman elected to the British House of Commons, though she did not take her seat. She was later one of the first women in the world to hold a cabinet post.
• 1868 – 1927 Gaston Leroux (1868-1927) Died 15 April 1927, aged 58 Gaston Leroux was a French journalist and novelist. He wrote The Phantom of the Opera and the locked-room mystery The Mystery of the Yellow Room.
• 1877 – 1927 Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) Died 14 September 1927, aged 50 Isadora Duncan was an American dancer who rejected ballet technique in favour of free, natural movement, and she is considered a founder of modern dance. She died in Nice when her long silk scarf caught in the wheel of an open car.
• 1877 – 1927 Wang Guowei (1877-1927) Died 2 June 1927, aged 49 Wang Guowei was a Chinese scholar of history, literary criticism and the Shang dynasty oracle bones. He drowned himself in Kunming Lake at the Summer Palace in Beijing.
• 1887 – 1927 Juan Gris (1887-1927) Died 11 May 1927, aged 40 Juan Gris was a Spanish painter based in Paris. He was one of the leading artists of Synthetic Cubism, alongside Picasso and Braque.
• 1889 – 1927 Li Dazhao (1889-1927) Died 28 April 1927, aged 37 Li Dazhao was a co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party and one of the first Chinese intellectuals to promote Marxism. The warlord Zhang Zuolin had him executed in Beijing.
• 1892 – 1927 Kevin O'Higgins (1892-1927) Died 10 July 1927, aged 35 Kevin O'Higgins was Vice-President of the Executive Council and Minister for Justice of the Irish Free State. He was assassinated by IRA members in Dublin in revenge for the executions carried out during the Civil War.
• 1892 – 1927 Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) Died 24 July 1927, aged 35 Ryūnosuke Akutagawa was a Japanese short-story writer whose works include Rashōmon and In a Grove. He took his own life in Tokyo. Japan's leading literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him.
• 1900 – 1927 Quantum mechanics Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger — the physics of the very small Max Planck's discovery that energy is emitted in discrete quanta (1900) launched quantum theory. Bohr's atomic model (1913), Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (1927), and Schrödinger's wave equation (1926) completed a revolution that showed nature at the atomic scale is fundamentally probabilistic. Quantum mechanics underlies lasers, transistors, MRI scanners, and the entire electronics industry.
• 1926 – 1927 A year with Harvey Cushing Boston, United States A Rockefeller travelling fellowship took him to the man who had invented modern neurosurgery. Cairns came back determined to build the speciality in Britain, and spent the next decade copying Cushing's methods — the meticulous records, the photographs, the refusal to hurry.
• 1926 – 1927 Hubble — the expanding universe Galaxies are receding — the universe had a beginning In 1924-1929, Edwin Hubble demonstrated that the "nebulae" are distant galaxies far beyond the Milky Way, and that they are receding from us at speeds proportional to their distance (Hubble's Law, 1929). The expanding universe implied it had once been smaller and hotter — the foundation of the Big Bang theory. It is the most consequential astronomical discovery of the 20th century.
• 1926 – 1927 1927 World Snooker Championship The Inaugural Championship The first world championship. Winner: Joe Davis; Runner-up: Tom Dennis. Score: 20–11.
• 1927 Being and Time published Martin Heidegger's major philosophical work Martin Heidegger published Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) in Husserl's phenomenology yearbook. The book analyses human existence, which Heidegger calls Dasein, and its relation to time. It shaped existentialism, hermeneutics and later continental philosophy.
• 1927 Capablanca loses to Alekhine The greatest upset in chess history Alexander Alekhine defeated Capablanca 6-3 with 25 draws in Buenos Aires in what is widely considered the biggest upset in chess history. Capablanca never got the rematch he sought.
• 1927 – 2025 Cleo Laine (1927-2025) Died 24 July 2025, aged 97 British singer and actress who mastered many styles but was known above all as the Queen of Jazz.
• 1927 First solo Atlantic flight First solo Atlantic flight Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis alone from New York to Paris on 20-21 May 1927, covering about 5,800 kilometres in 33.5 hours without radio or sextant. He won the $25,000 Orteig Prize and instant worldwide fame. The flight turned public opinion toward aviation as a practical way to travel rather than a stunt.
• 1927 First talkie film The Jazz Singer The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first feature-length film with synchronised dialogue, ending the silent era and transforming Hollywood.
• 1927 – 2023 Harry Belafonte (1927-2023) Died 25 April 2023, aged 96 American singer and actor who brought calypso to a mass audience and was a central financial and organisational figure in the civil rights movement.
• 1927 – 2011 John McCarthy (1927-2011) Died 24 October 2011, aged 84 The American computer scientist coined the term "artificial intelligence" and invented the Lisp programming language. He won the Turing Award in 1971 for his contributions to the field. He died in California after a long career at Stanford University.
• 1927 – 2024 Lucine Amara (1927-2024) Died 6 September 2024, aged 97 American soprano and prima donna of the Metropolitan Opera for four decades.
• 1927 – 2026 Michigan Stadium Ann Arbor, Michigan The Big House, the largest stadium in the United States and the third largest in the world. Its foundations were designed from the outset to allow expansion beyond 100,000 seats.
• 1927 Michigan Stadium opens Ann Arbor, Michigan The Big House, the largest stadium in the United States and the third largest in the world at 107,601. Its foundations were designed from the start to allow expansion beyond 100,000.
• 1927 – 2022 Sidney Poitier (1927-2022) Died 6 January 2022, aged 94 Bahamian-American actor, the first Black man to win the Academy Award for best actor, for Lilies of the Field.
• 1927 Television Electronic TV The electronic system for transmitting moving images into homes.
• 1927 – 1937 The first neurosurgical unit in a London teaching hospital London, United Kingdom He fought the general surgeons, who held that any competent surgeon could open a skull, and set up a dedicated unit at the London Hospital. He employed a medical artist in his theatres, which almost nobody did.
• 1927 – 2025 Yuri Grigorovich (1927-2025) Died 19 May 2025, aged 98 Russian dancer and choreographer who was artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet from 1964 to 1995.
• 1927 British Broadcasting Corporation established BBC becomes a public corporation under royal charter The privately owned British Broadcasting Company was replaced by the British Broadcasting Corporation, a public body created by royal charter. John Reith became its first director-general. The charter set up the model of public service broadcasting funded by a licence fee.
• 1927 Harlem Globetrotters play first game Basketball touring team debuts in Illinois Abe Saperstein's touring team, later called the Harlem Globetrotters, played its first road game in Hinckley, Illinois. The team was made up of African American players from Chicago. It went on to become a world-famous exhibition act.
• 1927 Transatlantic telephone service opens First commercial calls between New York and London AT&T and the British General Post Office opened a commercial radiotelephone service between New York and London. A three-minute call initially cost 75 dollars. It was the first regular voice link across the Atlantic.
• 1927 Metropolis premieres Fritz Lang's science-fiction epic opens in Berlin Fritz Lang's Metropolis premiered at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin. The silent film shows a futuristic city divided between rich planners and underground workers. It was one of the most expensive films of its time and became a founding work of science-fiction cinema.
• 1927 – 2019 Sydney Brenner (1927-2019) Died 5 April 2019, aged 92 Sydney Brenner was a South African-born biologist who helped decipher the genetic code and pioneered the use of the roundworm C. elegans as a model organism in developmental biology. He shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this work. He died in Singapore.
• 1927 – 2008 Eartha Kitt (1927-2008) Died 25 December 2008, aged 81 American singer and actress known for her distinctive purring vocal style, hit song "Santa Baby," and portrayal of Catwoman in the Batman television series. Her career spanned seven decades on stage, screen and recordings.
• 1927 – 1986 Olof Palme (1927-1986) Died 28 February 1986, aged 59 Swedish prime minister and Social Democratic leader, shot dead while walking home from a cinema in Stockholm without bodyguards. His assassination shocked Sweden, where street crime against senior politicians was almost unheard of. The killing was never conclusively solved despite decades of investigation.
• 1927 – 1996 Erma Bombeck (1927-1996) Died 22 April 1996, aged 69 Erma Bombeck was an American humorist whose syndicated newspaper column on suburban family life ran in hundreds of papers for decades. Her bestselling books, including "If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?", made her one of the most widely read American writers of her generation. She died following complications from a kidney transplant.
• 1927 – 2014 Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014) Died 17 April 2014, aged 87 Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate who wrote "One Hundred Years of Solitude," died in Mexico City. He was the leading figure of the Latin American magical realism literary movement. His works remain among the most widely read in world literature.
• 1927 North Tango earthquake Earthquake and fires devastate the Tango Peninsula A magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the Tango Peninsula in Kyoto Prefecture. Collapsing houses and the fires that followed killed about 3,000 people.
• 1927 Pan American Airways founded Future flagship US international airline is incorporated Pan American Airways was founded to carry airmail between Key West and Havana. Under Juan Trippe it grew into the leading US international airline. Pan Am later pioneered transpacific and transatlantic passenger services.
• 1927 Shōwa financial crisis Bank runs sweep Japan Finance Minister Kataoka Naoharu wrongly announced in the Diet that the Tokyo Watanabe Bank had failed. The statement set off bank runs across Japan. Dozens of banks collapsed, the Wakatsuki cabinet fell, and the government declared a three-week moratorium on payments.
• 1927 – 2003 Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) Died 26 March 2003, aged 76 Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a US senator from New York for 24 years and a social scientist who advised four presidents of both parties. Known for a wide-ranging intellect and provocative reports on poverty and family, he also served as ambassador to India and to the United Nations.
• 1927 Nanking Incident Foreign warships shell Nanjing after attacks on foreigners Soldiers of the Northern Expedition captured Nanjing and attacked foreign consulates, homes and missions. British and American warships shelled the city to cover the evacuation of foreign nationals.
• 1927 First Mille Miglia Italian road race from Brescia to Rome and back The first Mille Miglia was run over about 1,600 kilometres of public roads from Brescia to Rome and back. Drivers of OM cars took the first three places. The race became one of the most celebrated events in motor racing.
• 1927 – 1993 Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) Died 23 April 1993, aged 66 Cesar Chavez co-founded the United Farm Workers union and became the leading figure in the American labor movement for migrant farm workers. He organized boycotts and strikes, including the influential Delano grape strike, to demand better wages and conditions. He died in his sleep in San Luis, Arizona.
• 1927 – 2006 Ferenc Puskás The Galloping Major Leader of the "Magical Magyars" and Real Madrid icon; the FIFA Puskás Award is named in his honor.
• 1927 Napoléon premieres Abel Gance's epic debuts at the Paris Opéra Abel Gance's silent epic about the early life of Napoleon Bonaparte premiered at the Paris Opéra. It introduced Polyvision, a three-screen widescreen effect, and used new moving-camera techniques.
• 1927 Shanghai massacre Chiang Kai-shek purges communists from the Nationalist movement Nationalist troops and allied gangsters attacked communists and labour unions in Shanghai, killing hundreds of people and arresting many more. The purge ended the first alliance between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party. It is usually treated as the start of the Chinese Civil War.
• 1927 – 2022 Pope Benedict XVI (1927-2022) Died 31 December 2022, aged 95 German theologian who led the Roman Catholic Church from 2005 and in 2013 became the first pope in six centuries to resign.
• 1927 – 2008 Phil Hill The American Champion The first American-born driver to win the Formula 1 World Championship (1961).
• 1927 Great Mississippi Flood The most destructive river flood in US history The Mississippi River broke through levees across seven states, and the Mounds Landing crevasse gave way on 21 April. Around 70,000 square kilometres were flooded and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. The disaster pushed many African Americans to move north and led to the Flood Control Act of 1928.
• 1927 – 2006 Coretta Scott King (1927-2006) Died 30 January 2006, aged 78 Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr. and a civil rights leader in her own right, died following a stroke and complications from ovarian cancer. She had continued civil rights activism for decades after her husband's assassination. Her funeral was attended by four US presidents.
• 1927 To the Lighthouse published Virginia Woolf's modernist novel appears The Hogarth Press published Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. The novel follows the Ramsay family on the Isle of Skye through stream of consciousness and shifting points of view. It is one of the central works of literary modernism.
• 1927 Australian Parliament moves to Canberra Provisional Parliament House opened by the Duke of York The Duke of York, later King George VI, opened the provisional Parliament House in Canberra. The federal parliament moved there from Melbourne. This made Canberra the working seat of Australia's government.
• 1927 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences founded Hollywood body that later created the Oscars Louis B. Mayer and other film industry figures set up the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at a banquet in Los Angeles. The organisation was first intended to settle labour disputes and improve the industry's image. It held its first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929.
• 1927 Britain breaks relations with the Soviet Union ARCOS raid leads to a diplomatic rupture Police raided the London offices of the Soviet trading company ARCOS, looking for evidence of espionage. Two weeks later Stanley Baldwin's government broke off diplomatic relations with Moscow. Relations were not restored until 1929.
• 1927 Bath School disaster Bombing of a Michigan school kills 44 School board treasurer Andrew Kehoe set off explosives at the Bath Consolidated School in Bath Township, Michigan, and then blew up his own vehicle. He killed 38 children and six adults, including himself. It remains the deadliest school massacre in United States history.
• 1927 Treaty of Jeddah Britain recognises Ibn Saud's kingdom Britain and Ibn Saud signed the Treaty of Jeddah. Britain recognised his sovereignty over the Hejaz and Nejd, and Ibn Saud agreed to respect British protectorates on the Gulf coast. The treaty was an important step towards the founding of Saudi Arabia in 1932.
• 1927 Gulang earthquake Major earthquake strikes Gansu A magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck Gulang County in Gansu province in north-west China. It killed about 40,000 people and caused widespread landslides.
• 1927 – 2019 Doris Day dies Hollywood legend, age 97 Doris Day, one of the most popular Hollywood actresses and recording artists of the 1950s and 1960s, died on May 13, 2019, aged 97.
• 1927 First Ryder Cup Inaugural golf match between the United States and Great Britain The first official Ryder Cup was played at Worcester Country Club in Massachusetts. The United States beat Great Britain 9½ to 2½. The biennial team event went on to become one of golf's best-known competitions.
• 1927 – 2003 Slim Dusty (1927-2003) Died 19 September 2003, aged 76 Slim Dusty was an Australian country singer whose career spanned nearly 60 years and more than 100 albums. His 1957 recording 'A Pub with No Beer' was the first Australian record to sell a million copies internationally, and he became a national institution.
• 1927 Geneva Naval Conference Failed talks on limiting cruisers The United States, Britain and Japan met in Geneva to extend the naval limits of the Washington Treaty to cruisers and smaller warships. The talks broke down over disagreements between Britain and the United States on cruiser numbers and sizes.
• 1927 – 1987 Bob Fosse (1927-1987) Died 23 September 1987, aged 60 Fosse was an American director and choreographer known for his distinctive dance style and for films including Cabaret and All That Jazz. He won an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards and an Emmy, a rare combination in entertainment. He died of a heart attack in Washington, D.C.
• 1927 – 2023 Gina Lollobrigida (1927-2023) Italian actress, one of the great European stars of the 1950s and 1960s, and later a photojournalist and sculptor.
• 1927 Indonesian National Party founded Sukarno launches a nationalist party in Bandung Sukarno and others founded the Partai Nasional Indonesia in Bandung. It campaigned for independence from Dutch rule and refused to cooperate with the colonial authorities. The Dutch arrested Sukarno in 1929.
• 1927 – 2018 Neil Simon (1927-2018) Died 26 August 2018, aged 91 American playwright and screenwriter behind dozens of Broadway hits including The Odd Couple and Barefoot in the Park. He was among the most commercially successful playwrights in American theater history. His work also translated widely to film and television.
• 1927 – 2004 Janet Leigh (1927-2004) American actress best remembered for the shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho, and mother of Jamie Lee Curtis.
• 1927 Jericho earthquake Earthquake shakes Mandatory Palestine and Transjordan An earthquake centred near the northern Dead Sea struck Mandatory Palestine and Transjordan. It killed about 300 people and damaged buildings in Jerusalem, Nablus, Ramla and Amman.
• 1927 – 2017 Simone Veil (1927-2017) Died 30 June 2017, aged 89 French stateswoman and Auschwitz survivor who as health minister championed the 1975 law legalizing abortion in France, and later became the first president of the directly elected European Parliament. She was widely admired as a symbol of postwar European reconciliation. She was later interred in the Pantheon in Paris.
• 1927 July Revolt in Vienna Rioters burn the Palace of Justice Right-wing paramilitaries were acquitted of killing two people at Schattendorf, and workers in Vienna rioted in protest. Crowds set fire to the Palace of Justice. Police fired on the protesters and killed 89 people, which deepened the political divide in the First Austrian Republic.
• 1927 Battle of Ocotal Sandino's rebels attack US Marines in Nicaragua Augusto César Sandino's forces attacked a garrison of US Marines and Nicaraguan National Guard at Ocotal. American aircraft broke the attack in one of the first organised dive-bombing attacks in combat. The battle began Sandino's long guerrilla war against the US occupation.
• 1927 Bristol sessions Recordings that launched the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers Ralph Peer of the Victor Talking Machine Company recorded local musicians in Bristol, on the Tennessee–Virginia line. The sessions produced the first recordings of the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. They are often called the big bang of country music.
• 1927 Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act Britain restricts strikes after the General Strike After the 1926 General Strike, the Conservative government passed an act that banned sympathetic strikes and general strikes. It also required union members to opt in to paying the political levy to the Labour Party. The act was repealed in 1946.
• 1927 Nanchang Uprising Communist revolt later marked as the founding of the PLA Communist-led units under Zhou Enlai, He Long and Zhu De seized Nanchang from the Nationalists. They were driven out within days, but the uprising was the first major armed action by the Chinese Communist Party. China celebrates 1 August as the founding day of the People's Liberation Army.
• 1927 – 1978 Robert Shaw (1927-1978) Died 28 August 1978, aged 51 The English actor and novelist was widely known for playing shark hunter Quint in "Jaws" and for roles in "From Russia with Love" and "The Sting". He died of a heart attack while driving in Ireland.
• 1927 Wings premieres War aviation film that won the first Best Picture award William Wellman's First World War aviation drama Wings premiered in San Antonio, Texas. It was known for its realistic aerial combat scenes. In 1929 it won the first Academy Award for Outstanding Picture.
• 1927 – 2023 Rosalynn Carter (1927-2023) Died 19 November 2023, aged 96 American first lady from 1977 to 1981 who redefined the role as a policy partner and campaigned for mental health care for four decades.
• 1927 Execution of Sacco and Vanzetti Italian-born anarchists executed in Massachusetts Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in the electric chair at Charlestown State Prison. They had been convicted of a 1920 robbery and murder. Their trial was widely condemned as unfair, and the executions set off protests around the world.
• 1927 – 2003 Althea Gibson (1927-2003) Died 28 September 2003, aged 76 Althea Gibson was the first Black tennis player to compete at and win Grand Slam titles, taking the French, Wimbledon and US singles championships between 1956 and 1958. She later became the first Black player on the women's professional golf tour.
• 1927 Autumn Harvest Uprising Mao Zedong leads a peasant revolt in Hunan Mao Zedong led an insurrection of peasants, miners and soldiers in Hunan and Jiangxi. The uprising failed to take Changsha. Mao then withdrew the survivors to the Jinggang Mountains and set up a rural base there.
• 1927 – 2011 Peter Falk (1927-2011) Died 23 June 2011, aged 83 The American actor was best known for playing the rumpled television detective Lieutenant Columbo, a role that won him four Emmy Awards. He died at his home in Beverly Hills after suffering from dementia in his final years. Falk also appeared in films including "The In-Laws" and "The Princess Bride."
• 1927 The Long Count Fight Tunney beats Dempsey in their Chicago rematch Gene Tunney kept his heavyweight title against Jack Dempsey at Soldier Field in Chicago. Dempsey was slow to go to a neutral corner after knocking Tunney down in the seventh round, which delayed the referee's count and gave Tunney extra seconds to recover. Tunney got up and won the fight on points.
• 1927 Babe Ruth hits 60 home runs Sets a single-season baseball record Babe Ruth hit his 60th home run of the season at Yankee Stadium, off Tom Zachary of the Washington Senators. The record stood until 1961. That year's New York Yankees, known as Murderers' Row, went on to sweep the World Series.
• 1927 Carving of Mount Rushmore begins Work starts on the presidential monument in South Dakota Sculptor Gutzon Borglum and a crew of about 400 workers began carving the granite face of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills. The monument depicts Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln. Work continued until 1941.
• 1927 Oil strike at Baba Gurgur Discovery of the Kirkuk oil field The Turkish Petroleum Company struck oil at Baba Gurgur near Kirkuk. The gusher flowed uncontrolled for days. The discovery showed how large the Kirkuk field was and made Iraq a major oil producer.
• 1927 – 2017 Roger Moore (1927-2017) Died 23 May 2017, aged 89 English actor best known for playing James Bond in seven films between 1973 and 1985, the longest tenure of any actor in the role at the time. He also starred in the television series The Saint. Later in life he was a longtime UNICEF goodwill ambassador.
• 1927 – 2015 Günter Grass Writer, sculptor, Nobel laureate, 1927-2015 Günter Grass (1927-2015) — novelist, poet, playwright, sculptor and printmaker. Author of The Tin Drum (1959), the defining work of post-war German literature; winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1999); political activist and speechwriter for Willy Brandt; and, in his final decades, the man who shattered his own image as Germany's moral conscience by revealing his Waffen-SS service sixty years after the fact.
• 1927 – 1999 George C. Scott (1927-1999) Died 22 September 1999, aged 71 George C. Scott was an American actor best known for his Academy Award-winning performance as General George Patton in Patton, an award he famously declined. He also starred in Dr. Strangelove. He died of an abdominal aneurysm at his home in California.
• 1927 – 2018 Steve Ditko (1927-2018) Died 29 June 2018, aged 90 American comic book artist and co-creator, with Stan Lee, of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. His visual style helped define the look of Marvel Comics in the 1960s. He later withdrew from public life while continuing independent comics work.
• 1927 – 2013 Patti Page (1927-2013) Died 1 January 2013, aged 85 Patti Page was an American pop singer best known for the 1950s hit Tennessee Waltz, one of the best-selling singles of all time. She died in California shortly before receiving a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
• 1927 Simon Commission appointed All-British commission to review India's constitution The British government announced a statutory commission under Sir John Simon to report on constitutional reform in India. No Indians were appointed to it. The Indian National Congress and other parties boycotted the commission, and protests against it spread across India.
• 1927 Trotsky expelled from the Communist Party Stalin defeats the Left Opposition Leon Trotsky and Grigory Zinoviev were expelled from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Fifteenth Party Congress in December confirmed the defeat of the Left Opposition. Stalin was left in control of the party, and Trotsky was sent into internal exile in Alma-Ata early the next year.
• 1927 Holland Tunnel opens First mechanically ventilated vehicular tunnel under the Hudson The Holland Tunnel opened between Lower Manhattan and Jersey City. It was the first long underwater road tunnel with mechanical ventilation, which cleared vehicle exhaust. Its design became the model for later road tunnels.
• 1927 Ford Model A unveiled Successor to the Model T goes on public display Ford ended Model T production in May after more than 15 million cars had been built. The company shut its plants to retool for a new car. The Model A was shown to the public in December and drew huge crowds across the United States.
• 1927 Duke Ellington opens at the Cotton Club Start of Ellington's Harlem residency Duke Ellington and his orchestra began a long residency at the Cotton Club in Harlem. Regular radio broadcasts from the club gave the band a national audience. The engagement made Ellington one of the leading figures of jazz.
• 1927 – 1931 Duke Ellington's Cotton Club residency Harlem Radio broadcasts from the Cotton Club make his orchestra famous nationwide.
• 1927 – 2024 William Labov (1927-2024) Died 17 December 2024, aged 97 American linguist whose work on regional variation founded the field of sociolinguistics.
• 1927 Guangzhou Uprising Short-lived Canton Commune crushed by Nationalists Communists seized Guangzhou and declared a soviet government. Nationalist forces retook the city within three days and killed thousands of suspected communists afterwards.
• 1927 – 1990 Robert Noyce (1927-1990) Died 3 June 1990, aged 62 Robert Noyce was an American engineer who co-invented the integrated circuit and co-founded both Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel. His work laid the technical foundation for the modern computer industry. He died of a heart attack in Austin, Texas.
• 1927 – 2015 Kim Young-sam (1927-2015) Died 22 November 2015, aged 87 Kim Young-sam was President of South Korea from 1993 to 1998 and the country's first civilian president after decades of military rule. His administration prosecuted two former military presidents for corruption and mutiny. Kim's later term was marked by the Asian financial crisis that struck South Korea in 1997.
• 1927 Show Boat opens on Broadway Kern and Hammerstein musical premieres at the Ziegfeld Theatre Show Boat, by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II and based on Edna Ferber's novel, opened at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York. The musical dealt with racism and joined its songs closely to the plot, which set it apart from earlier revues. Its songs include Ol' Man River.