December 27

Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. 

– Proverbs 8:34

December is:

International Calendar Awareness Month - Most calendars are purchased in the month of December. January and November are also big selling months for calendars. Sponsor: Calendar Marketing Association.

Born on this Day

• 1571: Johannes Kepler, discovered planets travel in eliptical orbits.
  

• 1773: English engineer George Cayley, father of the science of aerodynamics
  

• 1822: Scientist Louis Pasteur in Dole, France. He developed the pasteurization process and rabies vaccination.
  

• 1829: Hinton Helper, southern abolitionist who wrote The Impending Crisis.
  

• 1879: Actor Sydney Greenstreet (Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, Across the Pacific, Passage to Marseilles, Malaya)
  

• 1901: Actress Marlene (Maria von Losch) Dietrich (The Blue Angel, Morocco, Kismet, Destry Rides Again, Judgment at Nuremberg, Witness for the Prosecution)
  

• 1911: Comedienne Anna Russell
  

• 1915: Physician William H. Masters (Human Sexual Response, On Sex and Human Loving)
  

• 1916: Actor and musician Oscar Levant (An American in Paris, The Bandwagon, Romance on the High Seas)
  

• 1926: Child psychologist Lee Salk
  

• 1932: Actress Inga Swenson
  

• 1933: PGA golf champion Dave Marr
  

• 1935: Fashion and perfume designer Bernard Lanvin
  

• 1940: Jockey Jerry Lambert
  

• 1941: Actor John Amos (Good Times, Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Coming to America, Future Cop)
  

• 1941: Baseball player Phil Gagliano
  

• 1943: ABC News correspondent Cokie Roberts
  

• 1943: Baseball player Roy White
  

• 1944: Singer Tracy Nelson
  

• 1947: Football player Bob McKay
  

• 1948: Actor Gerard Depardieu (A Pure Formality, My Father the Hero, Cyrano deBergerac, Jean DeFlorette, The Return of Martin Guerre, Tartuffe, Choice of Arms, Loulou, Going Places, The Holes)
  

• 1949: Musician and singer David Knopfler
  

• 1952: Singer-songwriter Karla Bonoff
  

• 1952: Rock musician David Knopfler (Dire Straits)
  

• 1952: Actress Tovah Feldshuh (Holocaust, The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal, Brewster’s Millions, Blue Iguana, A Day in October)
  

• 1952: Baseball pitcher Craig Reynolds
  

• 1953: Broadcast journalist Arthur Kent
  

• 1962: Country musician Jeff Bryant (Ricochet)
  

• 1972: Musician Matt Slocum (Six Pence None The Richer)
  

• 1973: Singer Olu
  

• 1973: Actor Wilson Cruz ("My So-Called Life") 

Events in History on this day
  

• 0388: Death of St. Fabiola
  

• 0537: Justinian dedicates Hagia Sophia
  

• 1253: William of Rubruck and Bartholomew of Cremona arrive at the Court of Mangu Khan of the Mongols
  

• 1512: The laws of Burgos give New World natives legal protection against abuse and authorize Negro slavery.
  

• 1558: Queen Elizabeth of England issues a Proclaimation forbidding any other kind of worship other that that used at the close of the reign of Henry VIII
  

• 1585: Death of Pierre de Ronsard, poet
  

• 1587: Coronation of Sigsimund III as King of Poland
  

• 1831: Naturalist Charles Darwin set out on a voyage to the Pacific aboard the HMS "Beagle." (Darwin's discoveries during the voyage helped formed the basis of his humorous theories on evolution.)
  

• 1845: Dr. Crawford Williamson Long used anesthesia for childbirth for the first time, when he delivered his own child in Jefferson, Georgia.
  

• 1875: Wagner dreamed that the Queen of Prussia was his mother.
  

• 1900: Militant prohibitionist Carry Nation carried out her first public smashing of a bar, at the Carey Hotel in Wichita, Kansas.
  

• 1900: The New York Tribune published a review of Puccini's new opera. "Silly and inconsequential incidents and dialogues," the Tribune critic reported speaking of "La Boheme."
  

• 1903: The barbershop quartet favorite, "Sweet Adeline", was sung for the first time -- in New York City. The song was composed by Henry Armstrong with the words of Richard Gerard. The title of the song came from a theatre marquee that promoted the great operatic soprano, Adelina Patti.
  

• 1913: Charles Moyer, president of the Miners Union, is shot in the back and dragged through the streets of Chicago.
  

• 1915: In Ohio, iron and steel workers go on strike for an eight hour day and higher wages.
  

• 1927: The musical play "Show Boat," with music by Jerome Kern and libretto by Oscar Hammerstein the Second, opened at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York.
  

• 1932: Radio City Music Hall opened in New York. It was the largest indoor theatre in the world. The gala grand opening show was a six-hour extravaganza that lost half a million dollars within three weeks.
  

• 1939: Vicious earthquakes take 11,000 lives in Turkey.
  

• 1939: "The Glenn Miller Show", also known as "Music that Satisfies", started on CBS radio. The 15-minute, twice-a-week show was sponsored by Chesterfield cigarettes and was heard for nearly three years.
  

• 1940: Singer Al Jolson and actress Ruby Keeler were divorced after 12 years of marriage.
  

• 1941: Japanese war planes bombed Manila in the Philippines, even though it had been declared an "open city."
  

• 1944: Amy Beach died. She was the first woman in the United States to have a symphony performed, and it is still performed to this day.
  

• 1945: 28 nations signed an agreement creating the World Bank.
  
  

• 1945: Foreign ministers of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union agree on a plan to take over Korea for five years.
  

• 1946: The American team won the Davis Cup for the first time since 1938.
  

• 1947: The children's television program "Howdy Doody," hosted by Bob Smith, made its debut on NBC. It showed under the title "Puppet Playhouse." It was aired for 13 years.
  
  

• 1949: Indonesia attains independence from the Netherlands.
  

• 1951: A Crosley automobile, with a steering wheel on the right side, became the first such vehicle placed in service for mail delivery. It was used in Cincinnati, Ohio.
  

• 1956: Segregation on Tallahassee, Florida buses is outlawed.
  

• 1968: The U.S. agrees to sell fifty F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.
  

• 1968: "Apollo Eight" and its three astronauts made a safe, nighttime splashdown in the Pacific.
  

• 1968: "The Breakfast Club" signed off for the last time on ABC radio, after 35 years on the air.
  
  

• 1969: Libya, Sudan and the United Arab Republic announce a political, economic and military agreement in Tripoli.
  

• 1970: "Hello, Dolly!" closed on Broadway after a run of 2,844 performances.
  

• 1971: Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy and Woodstock of Charles Schulz’ famous "Peanuts"
  comic strip made the cover of "Newsweek" magazine.
  
  

• 1972: Death of Lester B. Pearson (born 1897), Canadian statesman and prime minister from 1963-68. He wins the Nobel Peace Price in 1957 for his efforts to resolve the Suez Crisis in 1956.
  

• 1979: Soviet forces seized control of Afghanistan. President Hafizullah Amin, who was overthrown and executed, was replaced by Babrak Karmal.
  

• 1983: President Reagan takes all responsibility for the lack of security in Beirut that allowed a terrorist on a suicide mission to kill 241 Marines.
  

• 1984: Four Polish officers are tried for the slaying of Reverend Jerzy Popieluszko.
  

• 1984: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was the woman most admired by the American people, according to a Gallup Poll. It marked the third consecutive year that the ‘Iron Lady’ received that honor.
  

• 1985: Palestinian guerrillas opened fire inside the Rome and Vienna airports; a total of twenty people were killed, including five of the attackers, who were slain by police and security personnel.
  

• 1986: Corazon Aquino, President of the Philippines, was named "TIME" magazine’s Man of the Year. The only other women who had been so named were Queen Elizabeth II in 1952; and the Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Warfield Simpson, in 1936.
  

• 1987: Scores of Palestinian prisoners appeared before Israeli military courts in the first trials of several hundred protesters arrested in the "intefadeh," or uprising, in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
  

• 1988: Hundreds of residents of Lockerbie, Scotland, paid silent tribute to five of the Americans killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, as coffins containing the victims' remains began their journey home.
  

• 1989: President Bush, on a visit to Beeville, Texas, told a gathering he was determined to bring deposed Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega to justice "for poisoning the children of the United States" with illegal drugs.
  
  

• 1989: Romania’s National Salvation Front names a new government headed by President Ion Iliescu, a day after announcing the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu.
  

• 1990: The government reported that orders to manufacturers for "big ticket" durable goods plummeted ten and a-half percent the previous month. 
  

• 1990: Gennady I. Yanayev was approved as the Soviet Union's first vice president on the last day of a stormy, ten-day session of the Congress of People's Deputies. 
  

• 1992: The United States shot down an Iraqi fighter jet during what the Pentagon described as a confrontation between a pair of Iraqi warplanes and US F-16 jets in UN-restricted airspace over southern Iraq.
  

• 1993: US officials said that Strobe Talbott, who had served as the Clinton administration's chief Russia policy architect, would take over the number-two spot at the State Department.
  

• 1996: In Belgrade, Yugoslavia, about 60,000 opposition supporters defied riot police and rallied in celebration of an international report backing their triumph over Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in recent local elections.
  

• 1994: Four Roman Catholic priests – three French and a Belgian – were shot to death in their rectory in Algiers, a day after French commandos killed four radicals who had hijacked an Air France jet from Algiers to Marseille.
  

• 1995: Israeli jeeps sped out of the West Bank town of Ramallah, capping a seven-week pullout giving Yasser Arafat control over 90 percent of the West Bank's one million Palestinian residents and one-third of its land. 
  

• 1995:Death of Ukraine-born Shura Cherkassky, one of the world’s last great romantic pianists. — VNS/REUTERS/AP
  

• 1997: Billy Wright, Northern Ireland's most notorious Protestant militant, was shot to death by three members of the Irish National Liberation Army at the Maze Prison outside Belfast.
  

• 1998: A week after she was born weighing just ten-point-three ounces, the smallest of the Houston octuplets (Chijindu Chidera) died from heart and lung failure.
  

• 1998: Six inmates, including four convicted killers, escaped from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Tennessee (all were recaptured by the end of next day).
  

• 1999: Space shuttle "Discovery" and its seven-member crew returned to Earth after fixing the Hubble Space Telescope. 
  

• 1999: Former television executive Leonard H. Goldenson, who'd built ABC into a network powerhouse, died in Longboat Key, Florida, at age 94. 
  

• 1999: Death of Curtis Mayfield, a prolific composer and singer whose songs evoked the struggle of African Americans. He was 57.  VNS/REUTERS/AP
  
  

• 2000 - Mario Lemeiux of the Pittsburgh Penguins returned to the National Hockey League as a player after over 3 years of retirement. He was the first owner-player in the modern era of pro sports. Lemieux had purchased the Pittsburgh Penguins during his retirement from playing. 
  
  

• 2001 - U.S. President George W. Bush granted China permanent normal trade status with the United States.
  

• 2001: U.S. officials announced that Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners would be held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 
  
  

• 2001: President Bush extended permanent normal trade status to China. 
  
  

• 2001: India and Pakistan engaged in diplomatic tit-for-tat, ordering half of each other's embassy staffs sent home and banning overflights by each other's national airlines.

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