April 27
1650 - The Battle of Carbisdale: A Royalist army invades mainland Scotland from Orkney Island but is defeated by a Covenanter army
1667 - The blind, impoverished John Milton sells the copyright of Paradise Lost for £10
1759 - The birth of English author Mary Wollstonecraft
1773 - The British Parliament passes the Tea Act, designed to save the British East India Company by granting it a monopoly on the North American tea trade
1810 - Beethoven composes his famous piano piece, Für Elise
1813 - War of 1812: United States troops capture the capital of Ontario, York (present day Toronto, Ontario)
1865 - The steamboat Sultana, carrying 2,300 passengers, explodes and sinks in the Mississippi River, killing 1,700, most of whom were Union survivors of the Andersonville Prison
1961 - Sierra Leone is granted its independence from the United Kingdom, with Milton Margai as the first Prime Minister
1967 - Expo 67 officially opens in Montreal, Canada with a large opening ceremony broadcast around the world. It opens to the public the next day
1974 - 10,000 march in Washington, D.C., calling for impeachment of US President Nixon
1981 - Xerox PARC introduces the computer mouse
1987 - The U.S. Justice Department bars the Austrian President Kurt Waldheim from entering the United States, saying he had aided in the deportation and execution of thousands of Jews and others as a German Army officer during World War II
1992 - Betty Boothroyd becomes the first woman to be elected Speaker of the British House of Commons in its 700-year history
1994 - South African general election, 1994: The first democratic general election in South Africa, in which black citizens could vote
1997 - Production began on Duke Nukem Forever, which was not completed as of the 10th anniversary of this date
2002 - The last successful telemetry from NASA space probe Pioneer 10
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