October 27th
Month:
Day:
- 1682 Philadelphia is founded by William Penn, laying the groundwork for one of America's most historic cities.
- 1810 The United States annexes West Florida from Spain, expanding its territory along the Gulf Coast.
- 1854 The Chatham Rail disaster occurs when a gravel train is struck by an express train at Baptiste Creek, killing 52 people—the worst rail disaster in North America at the time.
- 1913 President Woodrow Wilson declares in Mobile, Alabama, that the U.S. will never again seek territory by conquest, marking a shift in foreign policy.
- 1997 The U.S. releases a redesigned $50 bill with anti-counterfeit features like color-shifting ink, security threads, and microprinting.
- 2019 California Governor Gavin Newsom declares a state of emergency as multiple wildfires, including the Kincade Fire, burn over 30,000 acres.
- 2020 A record 69.5 million Americans have voted early, one week before Election Day, representing over half of the total votes cast in 2016.
- 2021 The Cleveland Guardians men's roller derby team files a lawsuit to block the MLB's Cleveland Indians from changing their name to the Guardians.
- 2022 Elon Musk takes ownership of Twitter, immediately firing four top executives as he assumes control of the company.
- 1858 Theodore Roosevelt, future 26th President of the United States and Nobel Prize laureate, is born.
- 1787 The first of The Federalist Papers is published in The New York Independent, essays promoting the U.S. Constitution under the pseudonym "Publius."
- 1954 Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio divorce after less than a year of marriage, ending one of Hollywood's most famous unions.
- 1994 The U.S. Justice Department announces that the nation's prison population has exceeded one million for the first time in history.
- 1904 The New York City Subway begins operations, becoming the oldest underground subway system in the U.S. and eventually one of the world's largest.
- 1871 Boss Tweed, leader of New York's Tammany Hall, is arrested after The New York Times exposes his extensive corruption.
