May 27

• May 27, 1564
  John Calvin, one of the dominant figures of the Protestant Reformation, dies in Geneva
• May 27, 1629
  The Treaty of Lübeck is signed between Denmark and the Holy Roman Empire
• May 27, 1644
  After decisive victory at the Shanhai Pass, the Manchu, the people from Northeastern China, conquer China ending the Ming Dynasty and establish subsequent Qing Dynasty, which rule until 1912
• May 27, 1647
  Alse Young becomes first woman known to be executed as a witch in the thirteen American colonies
• May 27, 1679
  Habeas Corpus Act, a procedural device to force the courts to examine the lawfulness of a prisoner's detention, passes in England
• May 27, 1703
  Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg, the capital of Russia until 1918, on small Hare Island by the north bank of the Neva River ceded by Sweden during the Great Northern War
• May 27, 1738
  Turkish troops occupy city of Ochakiv
• May 27, 1895
  British inventor Birt Acres patents the first British 35 mm moving picture camera
• May 27, 1930
  The Chrysler Building, 319 meters tall skyscraper on the east side of Manhattan, opens to the public and becomes the tallest man-made structure in the world
• May 27, 1931
  Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer make first flight into stratosphere, by balloon and gather substantial data on the upper atmosphere, as well as measure cosmic rays
• May 27, 1937
  In California, USA, the Golden Gate Bridge officially opens to pedestrian traffic, becoming the world's longest span
• May 27, 1939
  DC Comics publishes its second superhero, "Batman"
• May 27, 1940
  Belgium surrenders to Germany
• May 27, 1942
  Jan Kubiš and Josef Gabcik, part of a Czechoslovak commando team from England, make an assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich, who is wounded by grenade shrapnel, and later dies of the wound, in Prague
• May 27, 1949
  Chinese Red army occupies Shanghai during Chinese Civil War
• May 27, 1952
  European Defense Community, an international organization to form a pan-European defense force, is formed
• May 27, 1952
  The first effective vaccine against poliomyelitis, an viral infectious disease, is developed by Jonas Salk
• May 27, 1969
  Walt Disney World construction begins in Bay Lake, Florida, United States
• May 27, 1977
  Two Boeing 747 passenger aircrafts collide on the runway of Los Rodeos Airport on the Spanish island of Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands, becoming the deadliest accident in aviation history with a number of 583 fatalities
• May 27, 1994
  Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Russian novelist, returns to Russia after 20 years in exile
• May 27, 1996
  Russian President Boris Yeltsin meets with Chechnyan rebels for the first time and negotiates a cease-fire in the war, marking end of First Chechen War
• May 27, 1999
  The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands indicts Slobodan Milosevic and four others for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo
• May 27, 2008
  Nepal's constituent assembly in Kathmandu, mostly consisting of communist parties, votes 597 to 4 to abolish 240 years of royal rule, becoming a democratic republic nation