On This Day

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Important events of history that took place in India and elsewhere on today’s date.

27 April

🇮🇳 In India

1854 The first telegram was sent from Mumbai to Pune.

1930 T K Madhavan, social reformer, journalist and revolutionary, who was involved with the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, died. He hailed from Kerala and led the struggle against untouchability which was known as Vaikom Satyagraha.

1960 Rajshekhar Basu (Parashuram), Bengali chemist, author and lexicographer, died in Kolkata. He was chiefly known for his comic and satirical short stories, and is considered the greatest Bengali humorist of the twenty-first century. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1956.

1960 The National Defence College, located in New Delhi, was founded. It is the defence service training institute and highest seat of strategic learning for officers of the Defence Service and the Civil Services.

🌎 Elsewhere

1521 Ferdinand Magellan, Portuguese explorer who is credited with masterminding the first expedition to circumnavigate the world, was killed during a fight with inhabitants of Mactan Island, Philippines.

1759 Author and activist Mary Wollstonecraft—who, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), was the first to advocate for British women's suffrage—was born in London.

1791 Samuel Morse, an American painter and the inventor of an electric telegraph and a co-inventor of the Morse code, was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts.

1810 Ludwig van Beethoven composed his famous piano piece Für Elise.

1828 The London Zoo opened to fellows of the Zoological Society of London. It was originally intended to be used as a collection for scientific study. As of 2017 it was the world's oldest scientific zoo and housed 20,166 animals.

1848 Slave trade was abolished in the French colonies.

1921 Afghanistan achieved sovereignty after 84 years of British control.

1945 Benito Mussolini, who came up with the term fascism, was arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, while attempting escape disguised as a German soldier.

1960 After several years as an autonomous republic in the French Union, the West African country of Togo became independent.

1961 Sierra Leone becomes an independent republic.

1972 Kwame Nkrumah, Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary, died in Bucharest, Romania. He was the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, having led the Gold Coast to independence from Britain in 1957.

1981 Xerox PARC introduced the first personal computer mouse.

1994 South African citizens of all races are allowed to vote in a general election for the first time.

2005 Vladimir Putin became the first Kremlin leader to visit Israel, capping a historic reconciliation between two nations that once faced each other as bitter enemies across the Cold War divide.

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