TODAY IN HISTORY ― FEBRUARY 27

February 27 is the 58th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 307 days remaining until the end of the year (308 in leap years). This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Monday, Wednesday or Saturday (58 in 400 years each) than on Thursday or Friday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Tuesday or Sunday (56).

NATIONAL TORTILLA CHIP DAY  

425 – The University of Constantinople is founded by Emperor Theodosius II at the urging of his wife Aelia Eudocia.  

1782 – American Revolutionary War: The House of Commons of Great Britain votes against further war in America. 

1864 – American Civil War: The first Northern prisoners arrive at the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia.

1902 – Second Boer War: Australian soldiers Harry 'Breaker' Morant and Peter Handcock are executed in Pretoria for war crimes. 

1922 – A challenge to the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, allowing women the right to vote, is rebuffed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Leser v. Garnett. 

1933 – The Reichstag fire: Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, is set on fire; Marinus van der Lubbe, a young Dutch Communist claims responsibility. The Nazis used the fire to solidify their power and eliminate the communists as political rivals. 

1939 – United States labor law: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that sit-down strikes violate property owners' rights and are therefore illegal. 

1940 – Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben discover Carbon-14, used for dating of materials containing Carbon-14 using is decay half-life of 5730 years.

1942 – World War II: During the Battle of the Java Sea, an Allied strike force is defeated by a Japanese task force in the Java Sea in the Dutch East Indies. 

1943 – The Smith Mine #3 in Bearcreek, Montana, explodes, killing 74 men. 

1951 – The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, is ratified by the required two-thirds of the states. 

1973 – The American Indian Movement (AIM) occupies Wounded Knee, South Dakota. 

1991 – Gulf War: U.S. President George H. W. Bush announces that "Kuwait is liberated".

2010 – An earthquake measuring 8.8 on the moment magnitude scale strikes central parts of Chile leaving over 500 victims, and thousands injured. The quake triggered a tsunami which struck Hawaii shortly after.

 

2015 – A gunman kills seven people then himself in a series of shootings in Tyrone, Missouri.

BORN TODAY 

272 – Constantine the Great, Roman emperor (d. 337)

1807 – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet and educator (d. 1882)

1869 – Alice Hamilton, American physician and academic (d. 1970)

1899 – Charles Herbert Best, American-Canadian physiologist and biochemist, co-discovered Insulin (d. 1978)

1902 – John Steinbeck, American journalist and author, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1968)

1942 – Robert H. Grubbs, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.