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Here are notable events that took place on May 27 throughout history.
1703 — Peter the Great founds St. Petersburg, establishing the city that would become Russia’s imperial capital for more than two centuries.
1813 — Thomas Jefferson writes to John Adams in one of the famous exchanges between the two former presidents during their later years.
1831 — Comanche warriors kill mountain man Jedediah Smith, one of the most celebrated explorers of the American West.
1887 — Chinese gold miners are slaughtered in the Hells Canyon Massacre along the Snake River in one of the worst mass murders of Chinese immigrants in American history.
1897 — Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” goes on sale in London, launching one of the most enduring horror stories in literary history.
1905 — The Battle of Tsushima concludes with Japan’s navy decisively defeating the Russian fleet in the Russo-Japanese War — the first major naval victory by an Asian nation over a European power.
1937 — The Golden Gate Bridge opens in San Francisco after four years of construction, becoming one of the most iconic landmarks in the world.
1939 — The MS St. Louis, carrying 937 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution, is turned away from Havana, Cuba. Only 28 passengers are admitted. The ship is also denied entry into the United States before being forced to return to Europe, where many of its passengers later perished in the Holocaust.
1940 — The British evacuation of Dunkirk turns deadly as German forces commit atrocities against Allied troops during the retreat.
1941 — The British navy sinks the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic, avenging the loss of HMS Hood six days earlier.
1941 — President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaims an unlimited national emergency in response to the growing Nazi threat in Europe.
1943 — U.S. Olympian Louis Zamperini’s plane goes down in the Pacific during World War II, beginning the survival ordeal later chronicled in the book and film “Unbroken.”
1949 — Marilyn Monroe poses for her famous red velvet nude photo session, images that would later appear in the first issue of Playboy magazine.
1963 — Bob Dylan’s breakthrough album “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” is released, featuring “Blowin’ in the Wind” and establishing him as the voice of a generation.
1971 — Sweden announces support for the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, deepening tensions with the United States.
1986 — African American inventor Lonnie Johnson patents the Super Soaker water gun, which becomes one of the best-selling toys in history.
1994 — Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn returns to Russia after 20 years in exile following the fall of the Soviet Union.