Today in History: April 27

Today is Saturday, April 27, the 118th day of 2024. There are 248 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On April 27, 1521, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed by natives in the Philippines.

On this date:

In 1810, Ludwig van Beethoven wrote one of his most famous piano compositions, the Bagatelle in A-minor.

In 1813, the Battle of York took place in Upper Canada during the War of 1812 as a U.S. force defeated the British garrison in present-day Toronto before withdrawing.

In 1865, the steamer Sultana, carrying freed Union prisoners of war, exploded on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tennessee; death toll estimates vary from 1,500 to 2,000.

In 1941, German forces occupied Athens during World War II.

In 1973, acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray resigned after it was revealed that he’d destroyed files removed from the safe of Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt.

In 1978, 51 construction workers plunged to their deaths when a scaffold inside a cooling tower at the Pleasants Power Station site in West Virginia fell 168 feet to the ground.

In 1992, Russia and 12 other former Soviet republics won entry into the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

In 1994, former President Richard M. Nixon was remembered at an outdoor funeral service attended by all five of his successors at the Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda, California.

In 2010, former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was extradited from the United States to France, where he was later convicted of laundering drug money and received a seven-year sentence.

In 2011, powerful and deadly tornadoes raked the South and Midwest; more than 60 tornadoes crossed parts of Alabama, leaving about 250 people dead and thousands of others injured in the state.

In 2012, the space shuttle Enterprise, mounted atop a jumbo jet, sailed over the New York City skyline on its final flight before becoming a museum piece aboard the USS Intrepid.

In 2015, rioters plunged part of Baltimore into chaos, torching a pharmacy, setting police cars ablaze and throwing bricks at officers hours after thousands attended a funeral for Freddie Gray, a Black man who died from a severe spinal injury he’d suffered in police custody; the Baltimore Orioles’ home game against the Chicago White Sox was postponed because of safety concerns.

In 2018, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made history by crossing over to South Korea to meet with President Moon Jae-in; it was the first time a member of the Kim dynasty had set foot on southern soil since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

In 2019, a gunman opened fire inside a synagogue near San Diego as worshippers celebrated the last day of Passover, killing a woman and wounding the rabbi and two others. (John Earnest, a white supremacist, has been sentenced to both federal and state life prison terms.)

In 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour for federal contractors, providing a pay bump to hundreds of thousands of workers.

In 2022, Russia cut off natural gas to NATO members Poland and Bulgaria and threatened to do the same to other countries, using its most essential export as an attempt to punish and divide the West for its united support of Ukraine.

In 2023, Jerry Springer, the onetime mayor and news anchor whose namesake TV show featured a three-ring circus of dysfunctional guests willing to bare all — sometimes literally — as they brawled and hurled obscenities before a raucous audience, died at 79.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor Anouk Aimee is 92. Rock musician Jim Keltner is 82. Rock singer Kate Pierson (The B-52’s) is 76. R&B singer Herb Murrell (The Stylistics) is 75. Actor Douglas Sheehan is 75. Rock musician Ace Frehley is 73. West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice is 73. Pop singer Sheena Easton is 65. Actor James Le Gros is 62. Rock musician Rob Squires (Big Head Todd and the Monsters) is 59. Singer Mica Paris is 55. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., is 55. Actor David Lascher is 52. Actor Maura West is 52. Actor Sally Hawkins is 48. Rock singer Jim James (My Morning Jacket) is 46. Rock musician Patrick Hallahan (My Morning Jacket) is 46. Rock singer-musician Travis Meeks (Days of the New) is 45. Country musician John Osborne (Brothers Osborne) is 42. Actor Francis Capra is 41. Actor Ari Graynor is 41. Rock singer-musician Patrick Stump (Fall Out Boy) is 40. Actor Sheila Vand is 39. Actor Jenna Coleman is 38. Actor William Moseley is 37. Singer Lizzo is 36. Actor Emily Rios is 35 Singer Allison Iraheta is 32.