Today In History – This Day In History Funny Events

Hagia Sophia, officially the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque, is a mosque and a major cultural and historical site in Istanbul, Turkey. It was formerly a church (360–1453) and a museum (1935–2020). The last of three church buildings to be successively erected on the site by the Eastern Roman Empire, it was completed in AD 537, becoming the world's largest interior space and among the first to employ a fully pendentive dome. It is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and is said to have "changed the history of architecture". From its dedication in 360 until 1453 Hagia Sophia served as the cathedral of Constantinople in the Byzantine liturgical tradition, except for the period 1204–1261 when the Latin Crusaders installed their own hierarchy. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, it served as a mosque, having its minarets added soon after. The site became a museum in 1935, and was redesignated as a mosque in 2020.

The Hagia Sophia is completed.

The Laws of Burgos, promulgated on 27 December 1512 in Burgos, Crown of Castile (Spain), was the first codified set of laws governing the behavior of Spaniards in the Americas, particularly with regard to the Indigenous people of the Americas. They forbade the slavery of the indigenous people and endorsed their conversion to Catholicism. The laws were created following the conquest and Spanish colonization of the Americas in the West Indies, where the common law of Castile was not fully applicable. Friars and Spanish academics pressured King Ferdinand II of Aragon and his daughter, Queen regnant, Joanna of Castile, to pass the set of laws in order to protect the rights of the natives of the New World.

The Spanish Crown issues the Laws of Burgos, governing the conduct of settlers with regard to native Indians in the New World.

The Zwickau prophets were three men of the Radical Reformation from Zwickau in the Electorate of Saxony in the Holy Roman Empire who were possibly involved in a disturbance in nearby Wittenberg and its evolving Reformation in early 1522.

The Zwickau prophets arrive in Wittenberg disturbing the peace and preaching the Apocalypse. Philip Melanchthon cannot silence them. Martin Luther is being held in protective custody at the Wartburg castle at this time. He is later released and is able, by his preaching, to regain the peace.

The Northern War of 1655–1660 was fought between Sweden and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, with participation at different times by Russia, Brandenburg-Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy, and Denmark–Norway. It ended with the treaties of Copenhagen and Oliva in 1660.

Second Northern War/the Deluge: Monks at the Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa are successful in fending off a month-long siege.

The Flushing Remonstrance was a 1657 petition to Director-General of New Netherland Peter Stuyvesant, in which some thirty residents of the small settlement at Flushing requested an exemption to his ban on Quaker worship. It is considered a precursor to the United States Constitution's provision on freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights.

The Flushing Remonstrance is signed.

The Methuen Treaty was a military and commercial treaty between England and Portugal signed in 1703 as part of the War of the Spanish Succession. Named after John Methuen, it actually refers to two treaties signed that year.

Portugal and England sign the Methuen Treaty which gives preference to Portuguese imported wines into England.

The War of 1812 was fought by the United States and its allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in North America. It began when the United States declared war on Britain on 18 June 1812. Although peace terms were agreed upon in the December 1814 Treaty of Ghent, the war did not officially end until the peace treaty was ratified by the United States Congress on 17 February 1815.

War of 1812: The American schooner USS Carolina is destroyed. It was the last of Commodore Daniel Patterson's makeshift fleet that fought a series of delaying actions that contributed to Andrew Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans.

Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental scientific concept. In a joint presentation with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey.

Charles Darwin embarks on his journey aboard the HMS Beagle, during which he will begin to formulate his theory of evolution.

The Lewes avalanche occurred on 27 December 1836 in Lewes, East Sussex, when a huge build-up of snow on a chalk cliff overlooking the town collapsed into the settlement 100 metres (330 ft) below, destroying a row of cottages and killing eight people. It remains the deadliest avalanche on record in the United Kingdom.

The worst ever avalanche in England occurs at Lewes, Sussex, killing eight people.

Diethyl ether, or simply ether is an organic compound with the chemical formula (CH3CH2)2O, belonging to the ether class. It is a colourless, highly volatile, sweet-smelling, extremely flammable liquid. It is a common solvent and was formerly used as a general anesthetic.

Ether anesthetic is used for childbirth for the first time by Dr. Crawford Long in Jefferson, Georgia.

John Louis O'Sullivan was an American columnist, editor, and diplomat who is known for coining the iconic phrase "manifest destiny" in 1845, in order to promote the annexation of Texas and the Oregon Country into the United States. O'Sullivan was an influential political writer and advocate for the Democratic Party at the time, who also served as U.S. minister to Portugal during the administration of President Franklin Pierce (1853–1857) and President James Buchanan (1857-1861).

Journalist John L. O'Sullivan, writing in his newspaper the New York Morning News, argues that the United States had the right to claim the entire Oregon Country "by the right of our manifest destiny".

"Jana Gana Mana" is the national anthem of the Republic of India. It was originally composed as "Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata" in Bengali written by polymath, activist and country's first Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore on 11 December 1911. The first stanza of the song "Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata" was adopted by the Constituent Assembly of India as the National Anthem on 24 January 1950. A formal rendition of the national anthem takes approximately 52 seconds. A shortened version consisting of the first and last lines is also staged occasionally. It was first publicly sung on 27 December 1911 at the Calcutta Session of the Indian National Congress.

"Jana Gana Mana", the national anthem of India, is first sung in the Calcutta Session of the Indian National Congress.

The Greater Poland uprising of 1918–1919, or Wielkopolska uprising of 1918–1919 or Poznań War was a military insurrection of Poles in the Greater Poland region against German rule. The uprising had a significant effect on the Treaty of Versailles, which granted a reconstituted Second Polish Republic the area won by the Polish insurrectionists. The region had been part of the Kingdom of Poland and then Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth before the 1793 Second Partition of Poland when it was annexed by the German Kingdom of Prussia. It had also, following the 1806 Greater Poland uprising, been part of the Duchy of Warsaw (1807–1815), a French client state during the Napoleonic Wars.

The Great Poland Uprising against the Germans begins.

Hōshō was the world's first commissioned ship that was built as an aircraft carrier, and the first aircraft carrier of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). Commissioned in 1922, the ship was used for testing carrier aircraft operations equipment, techniques, such as take-offs and landings, and carrier aircraft operational methods and tactics. The ship provided valuable lessons and experience for the IJN in early carrier air operations. Hōshō's superstructure and other obstructions to the flight deck were removed in 1924 on the advice of experienced aircrews.

Japanese aircraft carrier Hōshō becomes the first purpose built aircraft carrier to be commissioned in the world.

Show Boat is a musical with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It is based on Edna Ferber's best-selling 1926 novel of the same name. The musical follows the lives of the performers, stagehands and dock workers on the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi River show boat, over 40 years from 1887 to 1927. Its themes include racial prejudice and tragic, enduring love. The musical contributed such classic songs as "Ol' Man River", "Make Believe", and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man".

Show Boat, considered to be the first true American musical play, opens at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Broadway.

The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). From 1924 until the country's dissolution in 1991, the officeholder was the recognized leader of the Soviet Union. Prior to Joseph Stalin's accession, the position was not viewed as an important role in Vladimir Lenin's government and previous occupants had been responsible for technical rather than political decisions.

Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin orders the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class".

Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue and theater at 1260 Avenue of the Americas, within Rockefeller Center, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Nicknamed "The Showplace of the Nation", it is the headquarters for the Rockettes. Radio City Music Hall was designed by Edward Durell Stone and Donald Deskey in the Art Deco style.

Radio City Music Hall, "Showplace of the Nation", opens in New York City.

Regina Jonas was a Berlin-born Reform rabbi. In 1935, she became the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi. Jonas was murdered in the Holocaust.

Regina Jonas is ordained as the first female rabbi in the history of Judaism.

An earthquake struck Turkey's eastern Erzincan Province at 1:57:23 a.m. on 27 December 1939 local time with a moment magnitude (Mw ) of 7.8 and maximum Mercalli intensity of XII (Extreme). It is tied with the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes as the most powerful earthquake in Turkey to be recorded by instruments. However, it was less powerful than estimates of the 1668 North Anatolia earthquake. This was one of the largest in a sequence of violent shocks to affect Turkey along the North Anatolian Fault between 1939 and 1999. Surface rupturing, with a horizontal displacement of up to 3.7 meters, occurred in a 360 km long segment of the North Anatolian Fault Zone. The earthquake was the most severe natural loss of life in Turkey in the 20th century, with 32,968 dead, and some 100,000 injured.

The 7.8 Mw Erzincan earthquake shakes eastern Turkey with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). At least 32,700 people were killed.

The Winter War was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II, and ended three and a half months later with the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940. Despite superior military strength, especially in tanks and aircraft, the Soviet Union suffered severe losses and initially made little headway. The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from its organization.

Winter War: Finland holds off a Soviet attack in the Battle of Kelja.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an international financial institution and a specialized agency of the United Nations, headquartered in Washington, D.C. It consists of 191 member countries, and its stated mission is "working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world." The IMF acts as a lender of last resort to its members experiencing actual or potential balance of payments crises.

The International Monetary Fund is created with the signing of an agreement by 29 nations.

The Indonesian National Revolution, also known as the Indonesian War of Independence, was an armed conflict and diplomatic struggle between the Republic of Indonesia and the Dutch Empire and an internal social revolution during postwar and postcolonial Indonesia. It took place between Indonesia's declaration of independence in 1945 and the Netherlands' transfer of sovereignty over the Dutch East Indies to the Republic of the United States of Indonesia at the end of 1949.

Indonesian National Revolution: The Netherlands officially recognizes Indonesian independence. End of the Dutch East Indies.

The Cave of Swallows, also called the Cave of the Swallows, is an open-air pit cave in the municipality of Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, Mexico. The elliptical mouth, on a slope of karst, is 49 by 62 m wide and is undercut around all of its perimeter, widening to a room approximately 303 by 135 m wide. The floor of the cave is a 333 m (1,093 ft) freefall drop from the lowest side of the opening, with a 370 m (1,210 ft) drop from the highest side, making it the largest known cave shaft in the world, the second deepest pit in Mexico and perhaps the 11th deepest sheer drop in the world.

The Cave of Swallows, the largest known cave shaft in the world, is discovered in Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. Apollo was conceived during Project Mercury and executed after Project Gemini. It was conceived in 1960 as a three-person spacecraft during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Apollo was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal for the 1960s of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in an address to the U.S. Congress on May 25, 1961.

Apollo program: Apollo 8 splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the first orbital manned mission to the Moon.

The Spanish transition to democracy, known in Spain as la Transición or la Transición española, was a period of modern Spanish history encompassing the regime change that moved from the Francoist dictatorship to the consolidation of a parliamentary system, in the form of constitutional monarchy under Juan Carlos I.

Spain becomes a democracy after 40 years of fascist dictatorship.

The Soviet–Afghan War took place in Afghanistan from December 1979 to February 1989. Marking the beginning of the 46-year-long Afghan conflict, it saw the Soviet Union and the Afghan military fight against the rebelling Afghan mujahideen, aided by Pakistan. While they were backed by various countries and organizations, the majority of the mujahideen's support came from Pakistan, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Iran, and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, in addition to a large influx of foreign fighters known as the Afghan Arabs. American and British involvement on the side of the mujahideen escalated the Cold War, ending a short period of relaxed Soviet Union–United States relations.

The Soviet Union invades the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

Pope John Paul II was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death in 2005. He was the first non-Italian pope since Adrian VI in the 16th century, as well as the third-longest-serving pope in history, after Pius IX and St. Peter.

Pope John Paul II visits Mehmet Ali Ağca in Rebibbia's prison and personally forgives him for the 1981 attack on him in St. Peter's Square.

Palestinians are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. They represent a highly homogeneous community who share a cultural and ethnic identity, speak Palestinian Arabic and share close religious, linguistic, and cultural ties with other Levantine Arabs.

Palestinian guerrillas kill eighteen people inside the airports of Rome, Italy, and Vienna, Austria.

The Romanian revolution was a period of violent civil unrest in Romania during December 1989 as a part of the revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several countries around the world, primarily within the Eastern Bloc. The Romanian revolution started in the city of Timișoara and soon spread throughout the country, ultimately culminating in the drumhead trial and execution of longtime Romanian Communist Party (PCR) General Secretary Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena, and the end of 42 years of Communist rule in Romania. It was also the last removal of a Marxist–Leninist government in a Warsaw Pact country during the events of 1989, and the only one that violently overthrew a country's leadership and executed its leader; according to estimates, over one thousand people died and thousands more were injured.

The Romanian Revolution concludes, as the last minor street confrontations and stray shootings abruptly end in the country's capital, Bucharest.

The Taliban, which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is an Afghan political and militant organization with an ideology comprising elements of the Deobandi movement of Islamic fundamentalism and Pashtun nationalism. It ruled approximately 90% of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, before it was overthrown by an American-led invasion after the September 11 attacks carried out by the Taliban's ally al-Qaeda. Following a 20-year insurgency and the departure of coalition forces, the Taliban recaptured Kabul in August 2021, overthrowing the Islamic Republic, and now controls all of Afghanistan. The Taliban has been condemned for restricting human rights, including women's rights to work and have an education, and for the persecution of ethnic minorities, including Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. It is designated as a terrorist organization by several countries, and the Taliban government is largely unrecognized by the international community.

Taliban forces retake the strategic Bagram Airfield which solidifies their buffer zone around Kabul, Afghanistan.

William Stephen Wright, known as King Rat, was a Northern Irish loyalist paramilitary leader who founded the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) during The Troubles. Wright had joined the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in his home town of Portadown around 1975. After spending several years in prison, he became a Protestant fundamentalist preacher. Wright resumed his UVF activities around 1986 and, in the early 1990s, replaced Robin Jackson as commander of that organisation's Mid-Ulster Brigade. According to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), Wright was involved in the sectarian killings of up to 20 Catholics but was never convicted for any.

Protestant paramilitary leader Billy Wright is assassinated in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.

The Grozny truck bombing occurred on 27 December 2002, when three Chechen suicide bombers ran vehicles into the heavily guarded republic's government headquarters in the regional capital Grozny.

Two truck bombs kill 72 and wound 200 at the pro-Moscow headquarters of the Chechen government in Grozny, Chechnya, Russia.

In physics, radiation is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or a material medium. This includes:electromagnetic radiation consisting of photons, such as radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma radiation (γ) particle radiation consisting of particles of non-zero rest energy, such as alpha radiation (α), beta radiation (β), proton radiation and neutron radiation acoustic radiation, such as ultrasound, sound, and seismic waves, all dependent on a physical transmission medium gravitational radiation, in the form of gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime

Radiation from an explosion on the magnetar SGR 1806-20 reaches Earth. It is the brightest extrasolar event known to have been witnessed on the planet.

A prime minister, also known as a chief of cabinet, chief minister, first minister, minister-president or premier, is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but rather the head of government, serving as the chief of the executive under either a monarch or a president in a republican form of government.

Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in a shooting incident.

Mombasa is a coastal city in southeastern Kenya along the Indian Ocean. It was the first capital of British East Africa, before Nairobi was elevated to capital status in 1907. It now serves as the capital of Mombasa County. Buildings in the Central Business District are blue and white, representing the Indian Ocean. It is the country's oldest and second-largest city after Nairobi, with a population of about 1,208,333 people according to the 2019 census.

Riots erupt in Mombasa, Kenya, after Mwai Kibaki is declared the winner of the presidential election, triggering a political, economic, and humanitarian crisis.

The Gaza War, also known as the First Gaza War, Operation Cast Lead, or the Gaza Massacre, and referred to as the Battle of al-Furqan by Hamas, was a three-week armed conflict between Gaza Strip Palestinian paramilitary groups and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that began on 27 December 2008 and ended on 18 January 2009 with a unilateral ceasefire. The conflict resulted in 1,166–1,417 Palestinian and 13 Israeli deaths. Over 46,000 homes were destroyed in Gaza, making more than 100,000 people homeless.

Operation Cast Lead: Israel launches 3-week operation on Gaza.

After incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared victory in the 2009 Iranian presidential election, protests broke out in major cities across Iran in support of opposition candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. The protests continued until 2010, and were titled the Iranian Green Movement by their proponents, reflecting Mousavi's campaign theme, and Persian Awakening, Persian Spring or Green Revolution.

Iranian election protests: On the Day of Ashura in Tehran, Iran, government security forces fire upon demonstrators.