John Adams appointed to negotiate peace terms with British

In Rome, the Society of Jesus—a Roman Catholic missionary organization—receives its charter from Pope Paul III. The Jesuit order played an important role in the Counter-Reformation and eventually succeeded in converting millions around the world to Catholicism. The Jesuit movement was founded by Ignatius de Loyola, a Spanish soldier turned priest, in August 1534. The […]

Sudden and heavy fog causes two ships to collide, killing some 350 people off the coast of Newfoundland on September 27, 1854. The Arctic was a luxury ship, built in 1850 to carry passengers across the Atlantic Ocean. It had a wooden hull and could reach speeds of up to 13 knots, an impressive clip […]

On September 27, 1915, Second Lieutenant John Kipling of the British army, the only son of Nobel Prize-winning author Rudyard Kipling, is killed at the Battle of Loos, in the Artois region of France. The Battle of Loos, part of a joint Allied offensive on the Western Front, began on September 25, 1915, and engaged […]

On September 27, 1939, 140,000 Polish troops are taken prisoner by the German invaders as Warsaw surrenders to Hitler’s army. The Poles fought bravely, but were able to hold on for only 26 days. On the heels of its victory, the Germans began a systematic program of terror, murder, and cruelty, executing members of Poland’s […]

Sylvia Pankhurst, British suffragette and international socialist, dies in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at the age of 78. Born in Manchester, England, in 1882, Sylvia Pankhurst was the daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, a champion of woman suffrage who became active in the late 1880s. Sylvia won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art and in […]

Hollywood socialite Zsa Zsa Gabor, on trial for slapping a police officer, storms out of the courtroom in the middle of the district attorney’s closing argument. The prosecutor told the jury that Gabor “craves media attention . . . and abused two weeks of this process for her own self-aggrandizement.” Although her attorney objected when […]