Ship carrying hundreds of Jewish refugees, fleeing Nazi Germany, is turned away in Cuba

On May 27, 1813, former President Thomas Jefferson writes former President John Adams to let him know that their mutual friend, Dr. Benjamin Rush, has died. Rush’s passing caused Jefferson to meditate upon the departure of the Revolutionary generation. He wrote, We too must go; and that ere long. I believe we are under half […]

In May 1887, around 30 Chinese laborers were mining gold in an isolated part of northeast Oregon, when the entire group was gunned down by a white gang of horse thieves. Initially referred to as the “Hells Canyon Massacre” or “Snake River Massacre” and the “Chinese Massacre at Deep Creek,” the event is considered one of the deadliest attacks against Chinese-Americans in U.S. history.

During the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian Baltic Fleet is nearly destroyed at the Battle of Tsushima. The decisive defeat, in which only 10 of 45 Russian warships escaped to safety, convinced Russian leaders that further resistance against Japan’s imperial designs for East Asia was hopeless. On February 8, 1904, following the Russian rejection of a […]

On May 27, 1940, units from Germany’s SS Death’s Head division battle British troops just 50 miles from the port at Dunkirk, in northern France, as Britain’s Expeditionary Force continues to fight to evacuate France. After holding off an SS company until their ammo was spent, 99 Royal Norfolk Regiment soldiers retreated to a farmhouse […]

On May 27, 1941, the British navy sinks the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic near France. The German death toll was more than 2,000.

On May 27, 1949, unemployed 22-year-old model-actress Marilyn Monroe receives $50 for posing nude for a Los Angeles photographer against a red velvet backdrop. The picture will go on to become the most famous calendar photo in history and the principal attraction in the first issue of Playboy magazine. It will also risk destroying Monroe’s […]

In Sweden, Foreign Minister Torsten Nilsson reveals that Sweden has been providing assistance to the Viet Cong, including some $550,000 worth of medical supplies. Similar Swedish aid was to go to Cambodian and Laotian civilians affected by the Indochinese fighting. This support was primarily humanitarian in nature and included no military aid.

Two decades after being expelled from the USSR, Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn returns to Russia in an emotional homecoming. In 1945, Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to eight years of hard labor for criticizing Stalin in a letter to a friend. His prison experiences formed the basis for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, his […]