December 27 in History

Hagia Sophia, officially the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque, is a mosque and a major cultural and historical site in Istanbul, Turkey. It was formerly a church (360–1453) and a museum (1935–2020). The last of three church buildings to be successively erected on the site by the Eastern Roman Empire, it was completed in AD 537, becoming the world's largest interior space and among the first to employ a fully pendentive dome. It is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and is said to have "changed the history of architecture". From its dedication in 360 until 1453, Hagia Sophia served as the cathedral of Constantinople in the Byzantine liturgical tradition, except for the period 1204–1261 when the Latin Crusaders installed their own hierarchy. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, it served as a mosque, having its minarets added soon after. The site became a museum in 1935, and was redesignated as a mosque in 2020. The current structure was built by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I as the Christian basilica of Constantinople between 532–537 and was designed by the Greek geometers Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles. It was formally called the Temple of God's Holy Wisdom, (Greek: Ναὸς τῆς Ἁγίας τοῦ Θεοῦ Σοφίας, romanized: Naòs tês Hagías toû Theoû Sophías) the third church of the same name to occupy the site, as the prior one had been destroyed in the Nika riots. As the episcopal see of the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, it remained the world's largest church for more than five hundred years, until the abbey church at Cluny was completed in the 12th century. Hagia Sophia became the quintessential model for Eastern Orthodox church architecture, and its architectural style was emulated by Ottoman mosques a thousand years later. The Hagia Sophia served as an architectural inspiration for many other religious buildings including the Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki, Panagia Ekatontapiliani, the Şehzade Mosque, the Süleymaniye Mosque, the Rüstem Pasha Mosque and the Kılıç Ali Pasha Complex. As the religious and spiritual centre of the Eastern Orthodox Church for nearly one thousand years, the church was dedicated to Holy Wisdom. The church has been described as "holding a unique position in the Christian world", and as "an architectural and cultural icon of Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox civilization". It was where the excommunication of Patriarch Michael I Cerularius was officially delivered by Humbert of Silva Candida, the envoy of Pope Leo IX in 1054, an act considered the start of the East–West Schism. In 1204, it was converted during the Fourth Crusade into a Catholic cathedral under the Latin Empire, before being restored to the Eastern Orthodox Church upon the restoration of the Byzantine Empire in 1261. Enrico Dandolo, the doge of Venice who led the Fourth Crusade and the 1204 Sack of Constantinople, was buried in the church. After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, it was converted to a mosque by Mehmed the Conqueror and became the principal mosque of Istanbul until the 1616 construction of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque. The patriarchate moved to the Church of the Holy Apostles, which became the city's cathedral. The complex remained a mosque until 1931, when it was closed to the public for four years. It was re-opened in 1935 as a museum under the secular Republic of Turkey, and the building was Turkey's most visited tourist attraction as of 2019. In 2020, the Council of State annulled the 1934 decision to establish the museum, and the Hagia Sophia was reclassified as a mosque. The decision was highly controversial, sparking divided opinions and drawing condemnation from the Turkish opposition, UNESCO, the World Council of Churches and the International Association of Byzantine Studies, as well as numerous international leaders, while several Muslim leaders in Turkey and other countries welcomed its conversion.

The Northern War of 1655–1660 was fought between the Swedish Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, with participation at different times by Russia, Brandenburg-Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy, and Denmark–Norway. It ended with the treaties of Copenhagen and Oliva in 1660.

The Dutch Guards, nicknamed the Blue Guards during the late 17th century, were the foot guards of the Dutch States Army. They were disbanded in 1795 when the Dutch Republic was dissolved.

The Methuen Treaty was a military and commercial treaty between England and Portugal signed in 1703 as part of the War of the Spanish Succession. Named after John Methuen, it actually refers to two treaties signed that year. The treaty stipulated that no tax higher than the tax charged for an equal amount of French wines could be charged for Portuguese wines (but see below) exported to England, and that English textiles would be admitted to Portugal at all times, regardless of the geopolitical situation in each of the two nations (to ensure England would still accept Portuguese wine in periods when not at war with France). The Methuen Treaty has been the subject of diverse interpretations. Detractors, including Luís da Cunha, argued that the influx of English woollens led to the decline of the Portuguese wool industry. Additionally, emphasis on wine production, while bringing prosperity to certain regions, left Portugal heavily reliant on England as its primary wine buyer. Critics contended that the focus on wine came at the expense of other agricultural sectors and redirected the nation away from its path towards industrialization. In defense of the treaty, it has been asserted that Portugal lacked the necessary resources for substantial manufacturing endeavors, and its industries were already grappling with stagnation. Furthermore, some believed that the treaty did not confine Portugal's trade; instead, it played a pivotal role in augmenting the overall prosperity of the nation through increased commerce and stronger ties with England.

The War of 1812 was a conflict initiated by the United States against the United Kingdom and its allies fought mainly in North America and at sea during the wider Napoleonic Wars. The United States declared war on Britain on 18 June 1812. Although peace terms were agreed upon in the December 1814 Treaty of Ghent, the war did not officially end until the peace treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on 17 February 1815. The United States objected to British restrictions on American trade with Napoleonic France and to the Royal Navy's impressment of seamen from American vessels, including men the United States considered American citizens. Opinion in the US was split on how to respond, and although majorities in both the House and Senate voted for war in June 1812, they were divided along strict party lines, with the Democratic-Republican Party in favour and the Federalist Party against. News of British concessions made in an attempt to avoid war did not reach the US until late July, by which time the conflict was already underway. Britain, engaged in a global war against France, defended its maritime system as necessary to the defeat of Napoleon and treated many impressed sailors as British subjects. Tensions were also intensified by British relations with Indigenous confederacies resisting American expansion in the Old Northwest. British war aims were initially limited and defensive: to protect Canada (then British North America), maintain maritime rights, and avoid diverting major resources from the war in Europe. The United States, by contrast, launched repeated invasions of Upper and Lower Canada, all of which failed. At sea, the Royal Navy imposed an increasingly effective blockade of the American coast, while American privateers and naval victories inflicted localised, limited damage on British commerce and prestige. After Napoleon's abdication in April 1814, Britain reinforced North America and expanded operations against the United States, including the capture and burning of Washington in August 1814. American victories at Baltimore and Plattsburgh in September helped end major fighting in the northern theatre. In the southeast, American forces and allied Indigenous groups defeated the Red Stick faction of the Muscogee, while Andrew Jackson's army repulsed a British attack on New Orleans in January 1815, after the Treaty of Ghent had already been signed but before news of peace reached the region. The Treaty of Ghent restored the pre-war territorial status quo and did not settle the maritime issues that had contributed to the war. Impressment largely ceased after 1815 because the end of the Napoleonic Wars removed Britain's wartime manpower emergency, but Britain did not formally renounce its wider maritime claims in the treaty. Later Anglo-American disputes over the stopping, visiting, searching, and seizure of American vessels continued in narrower contexts, especially anti-slave-trade enforcement, and rare American allegations of post-war impressment appeared in diplomatic correspondence in the 1820s.

Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species have descended from a common ancestor is now accepted and considered a fundamental scientific concept. In a joint presentation with Alfred Russel Wallace, he proposed that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey.

The Lewes avalanche occurred on 27 December 1836 in Lewes, East Sussex, when a huge build-up of snow on a chalk cliff overlooking the town collapsed into the settlement 100 metres (330 ft) below, destroying a row of cottages and killing eight people. It remains the deadliest avalanche on record in the United Kingdom.

Diethyl ether, or simply ether (abbreviated as eth. or Et2O) is an organic compound with the chemical formula (CH3CH2)2O, belonging to the ether class. It is a colourless, highly volatile, sweet-smelling (termed "ethereal odour"), and extremely flammable liquid. It is a common solvent and was formerly used as a general anesthetic.

Manifest destiny was the expansionist colonial belief in the 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand westward across North America, and that this belief was both obvious ("manifest") and certain ("destiny"). The belief is rooted in American exceptionalism, romantic nationalism, Anglo-Saxonism, and nascent ideas of white chauvinism, implying the inevitable spread of republicanism and the American way. It is one of the earliest expressions of American imperialism. According to historian William Earl Weeks, there were three basic tenets behind the concept: The assumption of the unique moral virtue of the United States, the assertion of its mission to redeem the world by the spread of republican government and more generally the "American way of life", and the faith in the nation's divinely ordained destiny to succeed in this mission.

"Jana Gana Mana" is the national anthem of the Republic of India. It was originally composed as "Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata" in Sādhu Bhāṣā, a 19th-century Sankritised register of the Bengali language, written by polymath, activist and country's first Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore on 11 December 1911. The first stanza of the song "Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata", originally composed as a Hindu religious hymn for the Brahmo Samaj, was adopted by the Constituent Assembly of India as the National Anthem on 24 January 1950. A formal rendition of the national anthem takes approximately 52 seconds. A shortened version consisting of the first and last lines (and taking about 20 seconds to play) is also staged occasionally. It was first publicly sung on 27 December 1911 at the Calcutta (present-day Kolkata) Session of the Indian National Congress.

The Greater Poland uprising of 1918–1919, or Wielkopolska uprising of 1918–1919 (Polish: powstanie wielkopolskie 1918–1919 roku; German: Großpolnischer Aufstand) or Poznań War was a military insurrection of Poles in the Greater Poland region (German: Grand Duchy of Posen or Provinz Posen) against German rule. The uprising had a significant effect on the Treaty of Versailles, which granted a reconstituted Second Polish Republic the area won by the Polish insurrectionists. The region had been part of the Kingdom of Poland and then Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth before the 1793 Second Partition of Poland when it was annexed by the German Kingdom of Prussia. It had also, following the 1806 Greater Poland uprising, been part of the Duchy of Warsaw (1807–1815), a French client state during the Napoleonic Wars.

The Ukrainian War of Independence, also referred to as the Ukrainian–Soviet War in Ukraine, lasted from March 1917 to November 1921 and was part of the wider Russian Civil War. It saw the establishment and development of an independent Ukrainian republic, most of which was absorbed into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic between 1919 and 1920. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union between 1922 and 1991.

Hōshō (Japanese: 鳳翔; meaning "Soaring Phoenix") was the world's first commissioned ship that was built as an aircraft carrier, and the first aircraft carrier of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). Commissioned in 1922, the ship was used for testing carrier aircraft operations equipment, techniques, such as take-offs and landings, and carrier aircraft operational methods and tactics. The ship provided valuable lessons and experience for the IJN in early carrier air operations. Hōshō's superstructure and other obstructions to the flight deck were removed in 1924 on the advice of experienced aircrews. Hōshō and her aircraft group participated in the Shanghai Incident in 1932 and in the opening stages of the Sino-Japanese War in late 1937. During those two conflicts, the carrier's aircraft supported Imperial Japanese Army ground operations and engaged in aerial combat with aircraft of the Nationalist Chinese Air Force. The small size of the ship and her assigned airgroups (usually around 15 aircraft) limited the effectiveness of her contributions to combat operations. As a result, the carrier was placed in reserve after her return to Japan from China and she became a training ship in 1939. During World War II, Hōshō participated in the Battle of Midway in June 1942 in a secondary role. After the battle, the carrier resumed her training role in Japanese home waters for the duration of the conflict and survived the war with only minor damage from air attacks. She was surrendered to the Allies at the end of the war and used to repatriate Japanese troops until she was scrapped in 1946.

Show Boat is a musical with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It is based on Edna Ferber's best-selling 1926 novel of the same name. The musical follows the lives of the performers, stagehands and dock workers on the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi River show boat, over 40 years from 1887 to 1927. Its themes include racial prejudice and tragic, enduring love. The musical contributed such classic songs as "Ol' Man River", "Make Believe", and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man". The musical was first produced in 1927 by Florenz Ziegfeld. The premiere of Show Boat on Broadway was an important event in the history of American musical theatre. It "was a radical departure in musical storytelling, marrying spectacle with seriousness", compared with the trivial and unrealistic operettas, light musical comedies and "Follies"-type musical revues that defined Broadway in the 1890s and early 20th century. According to The Complete Book of Light Opera:Here we come to a completely new genre – the musical play as distinguished from musical comedy. Now … the play was the thing, and everything else was subservient to that play. Now … came complete integration of song, humor and production numbers into a single and inextricable artistic entity. The quality of Show Boat was recognized immediately by critics, and it is frequently revived. Awards did not exist for Broadway shows in 1927, when the show premiered, nor in 1932 when its first revival was staged. Late 20th-century revivals of Show Boat have won both the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical (1995) and the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival (1991).

The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). From 1924 until the country's dissolution in 1991, the officeholder was the recognized leader of the Soviet Union. Prior to Joseph Stalin's accession, the position was not viewed as an important role in Vladimir Lenin's government and previous occupants had been responsible for technical rather than political decisions.

Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue and theater at 1260 Avenue of the Americas, within Rockefeller Center, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Nicknamed "The Showplace of the Nation", it is the headquarters for the Rockettes. Radio City Music Hall was designed by Edward Durell Stone and Donald Deskey in the Art Deco style.

Regina Jonas (German: [ʀeˈɡiːna ˈjoːnas]; German: Regine Jonas; 3 August 1902 – 12 October/12 December 1944) was a Berlin-born Reform rabbi. In 1935, she became the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi. Jonas was murdered in the Holocaust.

The Winter War was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II, and ended three and a half months later with the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940. Despite superior military strength, especially in tanks and aircraft, the Soviet Union suffered severe losses and initially made little headway. The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from its organization. The Soviets made several demands, including that Finland cede substantial border territories in exchange for land elsewhere, claiming security reasons — primarily the protection of Leningrad, 32 km (20 mi) from the Finnish border. When Finland refused, the Soviets invaded. Most sources conclude that the Soviet Union had intended to conquer all of Finland, and cite the establishment of the puppet Finnish Communist government and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact's secret protocols as evidence of this, while other sources argue against the idea of a full Soviet conquest. Finland repelled Soviet attacks for more than two months and inflicted substantial losses on the invaders in temperatures as low as −43 °C (−45 °F). The battles focused mainly on Taipale along the Karelian Isthmus, on Kollaa in Ladoga Karelia and on Raate Road in Kainuu, but there were also battles in Lapland and North Karelia. Following the initial setbacks, the Soviets reduced their strategic objectives and put an end to the puppet Finnish communist government in late January 1940, and informed the legitimate Finnish government that they were willing to negotiate peace. After the Soviet military reorganized and adopted different tactics, they renewed their offensive in February 1940 and overcame the Finnish defences on the Karelian Isthmus. This left the Finnish Army in the main theatre of war near the breaking point, with a retreat seeming inevitable. Consequently, Finnish commander-in-chief Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim urged a peace deal with the Soviets, while the Finns still retained bargaining power. Hostilities ceased in March 1940 with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty in which Finland ceded 9% of its territory to the Soviet Union. Soviet losses were heavy, and the country's international reputation suffered. Their gains exceeded their pre-war demands, and the Soviets received substantial territories along Lake Ladoga and further north. Finland retained its sovereignty and enhanced its international reputation. The poor performance of the Red Army encouraged German Chancellor Adolf Hitler to believe that an attack on the Soviet Union would be successful and confirmed negative Western opinions of the Soviet military. After 15 months of Interim Peace, in June 1941, Germany commenced Operation Barbarossa, and the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviets began.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an international financial institution and a specialized agency of the United Nations, headquartered in Washington, D.C. It consists of 191 member countries, and its stated mission is "working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world". The IMF acts as a lender of last resort to its members experiencing actual or potential balance of payments crises. Established in July 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference based on the ideas of Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes, the IMF came into formal existence in 1945 with 29 member countries and the goal of reconstructing the international monetary system. For its first three decades, the IMF oversaw the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rate arrangements. Following the collapse of this system in 1971, the Fund's role shifted to managing balance-of-payments difficulties and international financial crises, becoming a key institution in the era of globalization. Through a quota system, countries contribute funds to a pool from which they can borrow if they experience balance-of-payments problems; a country's quota also determines its voting power. As a condition for loans, the IMF often requires borrowing countries to undertake policy reforms, known as structural adjustment. The organization also provides technical assistance and economic surveillance of its members' economies. The IMF's loan conditions have been criticized for imposing austerity measures that can hinder economic recovery and harm the most vulnerable populations. Critics argue that the Fund's policies limit the economic sovereignty of borrowing nations and that its governance structure is dominated by Western countries, which hold a disproportionate share of voting power. The current managing director is Bulgarian economist Kristalina Georgieva, who has served since 1 October 2019 and began a second five-year term on 1 October 2024.

The Indonesian National Revolution, also known as the Indonesian War of Independence, was an armed conflict and diplomatic struggle between the Republic of Indonesia and the Dutch Empire and an internal social revolution during postwar and postcolonial Indonesia. It took place between Indonesia's declaration of independence in 1945 and the Netherlands' transfer of sovereignty over the Dutch East Indies to the Republic of the United States of Indonesia at the end of 1949.

The Cave of Swallows, also called the Cave of the Swallows (Spanish: Sótano de las Golondrinas), is an open-air pit cave in the municipality of Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, Mexico. The elliptical mouth, on a slope of karst, is 49 by 62 m (161 by 203 ft) wide and is undercut around all of its perimeter, widening to a room approximately 303 by 135 m (994 by 443 ft) wide. The floor of the cave is a 333 m (1,093 ft) freefall drop from the lowest side of the opening, with a 370 m (1,210 ft) drop from the highest side, making it the largest known cave shaft in the world, the second deepest pit in Mexico and perhaps the 11th deepest sheer drop in the world.

The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. The Apollo program was conceived in 1960 in the Dwight D. Eisenhower presidency during Project Mercury and executed after Project Gemini. The Apollo program was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in his address to the U.S. Congress on May 25, 1961.

On December 27, 1968, North Central Airlines Flight 458 crashed into a hangar while attempting a night landing in poor weather at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. Of the 41 passengers and four crew members, only 17 passengers and one crew member survived. One person was killed and six were injured on the ground.

The Spanish transition to democracy, known in Spain as la Transición (IPA: [la tɾansiˈθjon]; 'the Transition') or la Transición española ('the Spanish Transition'), officially the Spanish State from 1975 to 1978 and Kingdom of Spain thereafter, was a period of modern Spanish history encompassing the regime change that moved from the Francoist dictatorship to the consolidation of a parliamentary system, in the form of constitutional monarchy under Juan Carlos I. The democratic transition began two days after the death of Francisco Franco, in November 1975. Initially, "the political elites left over from Francoism" attempted "reform of the institutions of dictatorship" through existing legal means, but social and political pressure saw the formation of a democratic parliament in the 1977 general election, which had the imprimatur to write a new constitution that was then approved by referendum in December 1978. The following years saw the beginning of the development of the rule of law and establishment of regional government, amidst ongoing terrorism, an attempted coup d'état and global economic problems. The Transition is said to have concluded after the landslide victory of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) in the 1982 general election and the first peaceful transfer of executive power. The end result of the Transition according to Casanova was "at least from 1982 onwards, a parliamentary monarchy, based on a democratic constitution, with a large number of rights and freedoms, the consequence of a complex transition, riddled with conflicts, foreseen and unforeseen obstacles and problems, in the context of economic crisis and political uncertainty." However, as then-prime minister González said later, "the state apparatus was retained, in its entirety, from the dictatorship". Most of the significant aspects in the Transition were adopted by consensus between the governments and the opposition. While often cited as a paradigm of peaceful, negotiated transition, political violence during the Spanish transition was far more prevalent than during the analogous democratization processes in Greece or Portugal, with the emergence of separatist, leftist, fascist and vigilante terrorist groups and police violence. The re-democratization also led to Spain's integration into Europe, a dream of Spanish intellectuals since the end of the 19th century. Previous attempts at democratization included the First Spanish Republic and the Second Spanish Republic.

Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła; 18 May 1920 – 2 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death in 2005. He was the first non-Italian pope since Adrian VI in the 16th century, as well as the third longest-serving pope in history, after St. Peter and Pius IX. In addition to this, he was an important philosopher and theologian of the 20th century. In his youth, Wojtyła worked occasionally as a stage actor. He graduated from an all-boys high school in Wadowice, Poland in 1938, shortly before World War II broke out. During the war, to avoid being kidnapped and sent to a German forced labour camp, he signed up for work in harsh conditions in a quarry. Wojtyła eventually took up acting and developed a love for the profession and participated at a local theatre. The linguistically skilled Wojtyła wanted to study Polish in university. During his studies, he was encouraged by a conversation with Adam Stefan Sapieha to study theology and become a priest. Eventually, Wojtyła rose to the position of Archbishop of Kraków and then to cardinal, both positions held by his mentor. Wojtyła was elected pope on the third day of the October 1978 conclave, becoming one of the youngest popes in over a century. The conclave was called after the death of John Paul I, who served only 33 days as pope. Wojtyła adopted the name of his predecessor in tribute to him. Pope John Paul II attempted to improve the Catholic Church's relations with Judaism, Islam, and the Eastern Orthodox Church in the spirit of ecumenism, holding atheism as the greatest threat. He maintained the Church's previous positions on such matters as abortion, artificial contraception, the ordination of women, and a celibate clergy, and although he supported the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, he was seen as generally conventional in their interpretation. He put emphasis on family and identity, while questioning consumerism, hedonism and the pursuit of wealth. He was one of the most-travelled world leaders in history, visiting 129 countries during his pontificate. As part of his special emphasis on the universal call to holiness, Pope John Paul II beatified 1,344 people, and canonised 483 saints, more than the combined tally of his predecessors during the preceding five centuries. By the time of his death, he had named most of the College of Cardinals, consecrated or co-consecrated many of the world's bishops, and ordained many priests. Pope John Paul II died on 2 April 2005, and was succeeded by Pope Benedict XVI. Pope John Paul II has been credited with fighting against dictatorships and with helping to end communist rule in his native Poland and the rest of Europe. Under John Paul II, the Catholic Church greatly expanded its influence in Africa and Latin America and retained its influence in Europe and the rest of the world. He was proclaimed venerable by Pope Benedict XVI on 19 December 2009, and on 1 May 2011 (Divine Mercy Sunday) he was beatified. On 27 April 2014, Pope John Paul II was canonised by Pope Francis, alongside Pope John XXIII. He has been criticised for allegedly not acting against or having been insufficiently harsh against the sexual abuse of children by priests, both as archbishop in the Polish People's Republic and during his papacy. After his canonisation, he has been referred to by some Catholics as "Pope Saint John Paul the Great", though that title is not official. Under Pope John Paul II, two of the most important documents of the contemporary Catholic Church were drafted and promulgated: the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which revised and updated the 1917 Code of Canon Law, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the first universal catechism to be issued since the Roman Catechism.

Palestinians are an Arab national group native to the region of Palestine, descended from those who have inhabited the area over the millennia. They represent a highly homogenized community who share a cultural and ethnic identity, and close linguistic and cultural ties with other Levantine Arabs.

The Romanian revolution (Romanian: Revoluția română) was a period of violent civil unrest in the Socialist Republic of Romania during December 1989 as a part of the revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several countries around the world, primarily within the Eastern Bloc. The Romanian revolution started in the city of Timișoara and soon spread throughout the country, ultimately culminating in the drumhead trial and execution of longtime Romanian Communist Party (PCR) General Secretary Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena, and the end of 42 years of Communist rule in Romania. It was also the last removal of a Marxist–Leninist government in a Warsaw Pact country during the events of 1989, and the only one that violently overthrew a country's leadership and executed its leader; according to estimates, over one thousand people died and thousands more were injured. Following World War II, Romania found itself inside the Soviet sphere of influence, with Communist rule officially declared in 1947. In April 1964, when Romania published a general policy paper worked out under Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej's instructions, the country was well on its way of carefully breaking away from Soviet control. Nicolae Ceaușescu became the country's leader the following year. Under his rule, Romania experienced a brief waning of internal repression that led to a positive image both at home and in the West. However, repression again intensified by the 1970s, and Ceaușescu's regime eventually became one of the most repressive in the world and one of the most repressive of modern times. Social and economic malaise had been present in the Socialist Republic of Romania for quite some time, especially during the austerity years of the 1980s. The austerity measures were designed in part by Ceaușescu to repay the country's foreign debts, but resulted in widespread shortages that fomented unrest. Amid tensions in the late 1980s, early protests occurred in the city of Timișoara in mid-December on the part of the Hungarian minority in response to an attempt by the government to evict Hungarian Reformed Church pastor László Tőkés. In response, Romanians sought the deposition of Ceaușescu and a change in government in light of similar recent events in neighbouring nations. The country's ubiquitous secret police force, the Securitate, which was both one of the largest in the Eastern Bloc and for decades had been the main suppressor of popular dissent, frequently and violently quashing political disagreement, ultimately proved incapable of stopping the looming, and then highly fatal and successful revolt. Shortly after a botched public speech by Ceaușescu on 21 December from a balcony of the Party headquarters in the capital Bucharest that was broadcast to millions of Romanians on state television, Defence Minister Vasile Milea's death and acting Defence Minister Victor Stănculescu's secret defection, rank-and-file members of the military switched, after being told to stay in barracks, from supporting the dictator to backing the protesters. With the army unmobilised and the headquarters thus unprotected, on 22 December protesters stormed the building and Victor Stănculescu convinced the Romanian leader to flee with his wife via helicopter. Denounced afterward by Stănculescu, they suddenly found themselves as fugitives and thus seemingly guilty of accused crimes, and a manhunt was declared. Captured in Târgoviște, they were tried by a drumhead military tribunal on charges of genocide, damage to the national economy, and abuse of power to execute military actions against the Romanian people. They were convicted on all charges, sentenced to death, and immediately executed on Christmas Day 1989. They were the last people to be condemned to death and executed in Romania, as capital punishment was abolished soon after. For several days after Ceaușescu fled, many would be killed in the crossfire between civilians and armed forces personnel which believed the other to be Securitate 'terrorists'. Although news reports at the time and modern media often makes reference to the Securitate fighting against the revolution, there has never been any evidence supporting the claim of an organised effort. Hospitals in Bucharest were treating as many as thousands of civilians. Following an ultimatum, many Securitate members turned themselves in on 29 December with the assurance they would not be tried. Present-day Romania has unfolded in the shadow of the Ceaușescus along with its Communist past, and its tumultuous departure from it. After Ceaușescu was summarily executed, the National Salvation Front (FSN) quickly took power, promising free and fair elections within five months. Elected in a landslide the following May, the FSN reconstituted as a political party, installed a series of economic and democratic reforms, with further social policy changes being implemented by later governments. From that point on, Romania has become far more integrated with the West. Romania became a member of NATO and the European Union in 2004 and 2007, respectively.

Scandinavian Airlines System Flight 751 was a regularly scheduled Scandinavian Airlines passenger flight from Stockholm, Sweden, to Warsaw, Poland, via Copenhagen, Denmark. On 27 December 1991, a McDonnell Douglas MD-81 operating the flight, registration OY-KHO, piloted by Danish Captain Stefan G. Rasmussen (44) and Swedish first officer Ulf Cedermark (34), both experienced pilots with 8,000 and 3,000 flight hours, respectively, was forced to make an emergency landing in a field near Gottröra, Sweden. Ice had collected on the wings' inner roots before takeoff, broke off, and was ingested into the engines as the aircraft became airborne, ultimately disabling both engines. All 129 passengers and crew aboard survived.

The Taliban, officially known as the Islamic Movement of Taliban, also referring to itself by the name of the government it operates, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is the ruling government and religious organization of Afghanistan, as well as a militant organization with an ideology comprising elements of the Deobandi movement of Islamic fundamentalism and Pashtun nationalism. It is de facto the sole legal political force in the country, and rejects the principle of democratic participation in its decision making, considering political parties to be un-Islamic. It governs and operates centrally under a supreme leader with unlimited power who issues fatwas serving both as law and religious instruction. It ruled approximately 90% of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, before it was overthrown by an American-led invasion after the September 11 attacks carried out by the Taliban's ally al-Qaeda. Following a 20-year insurgency and the departure of coalition forces, the Taliban recaptured Kabul in August 2021, overthrowing the Islamic Republic, and now controls all of Afghanistan. The Taliban has been condemned for restricting human rights, including women's rights to work and have an education, and for the persecution of ethnic minorities. It is designated as a terrorist organization by several countries, and the Taliban government is largely unrecognized by the international community.

Burger King Corporation is an American fast food chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The company was founded on July 23, 1953, as Insta-Burger King, a Jacksonville, Florida–based restaurant chain. After Insta-Burger King ran into financial difficulties, its two Miami-based franchisees David Edgerton (1927–2018) and James McLamore (1926–1996) purchased the company in 1959. Over the next half-century, the company changed hands four times and its third set of owners, a partnership between TPG Capital, Bain Capital, and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, took it public in 2002. In late 2010, 3G Capital of Brazil acquired a majority stake in the company in a deal valued at US$3.26 billion. The new owners promptly initiated a restructuring of the company to reverse its fortunes. 3G, along with its partner Berkshire Hathaway, eventually merged the company with the Canadian-based coffeehouse chain Tim Hortons under the auspices of a new Canadian-based parent company named Restaurant Brands International.

The Grozny truck bombing occurred on 27 December 2002, when three Chechen suicide bombers ran vehicles into the heavily guarded republic's government headquarters in the regional capital Grozny.

In physics, radiation is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or a material medium. This includes:electromagnetic radiation consisting of photons, such as radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma radiation (γ) particle radiation consisting of particles of non-zero rest energy, such as alpha radiation (α), beta radiation (β), proton radiation and neutron radiation acoustic radiation, such as ultrasound, sound, and seismic waves, all dependent on a physical transmission medium gravitational radiation, in the form of gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime

A prime minister, also known as a chief of cabinet, chief minister, first minister, minister-president or premier, is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but rather the head of government, serving as the chief of the executive under either a monarch or a president in a republican form of government.

Mombasa is a coastal city in southeastern Kenya on the Indian Ocean. It is the country's oldest city, traditionally dated to c. 900 AD, and its second-largest after Nairobi, with a population of 1,208,333 at the 2019 census. Mombasa serves as the capital of Mombasa County and was the original capital of the British East Africa Protectorate, a role Nairobi assumed in 1907. Buildings in the central business district are painted blue and white, in a nod to the ocean.

The Gaza War, also known as the First Gaza War, Operation Cast Lead, or the Gaza Massacre, and referred to as the Battle of al-Furqan by Hamas, was a three-week armed conflict between Gaza Strip Palestinian paramilitary groups and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that began on 27 December 2008 and ended on 18 January 2009 with a unilateral ceasefire. The conflict resulted in 1,166–1,417 Palestinian and 13 Israeli deaths. Over 46,000 homes were destroyed in Gaza, making more than 100,000 people homeless.

After incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared victory in the 2009 Iranian presidential election, protests broke out in major cities across Iran in support of opposition candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. The protests continued until 2010, and were titled the Iranian Green Movement by their proponents, reflecting Mousavi's campaign theme, and Persian Awakening, Persian Spring or Green Revolution.

Bek Air Flight 2100 was a domestic passenger flight from Almaty to Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, operated by a Fokker 100 that crashed on 27 December 2019 while taking off from Almaty International Airport. Of the 98 people on board, 13 died in the crash and 66 were injured. The Kazakh government started investigations on the same day.

In December 2025, items worth an estimated €30 million were stolen from a Sparkasse bank in Buer, a suburb of Gelsenkirchen, Germany. The thieves used a large drill to break into the bank's underground vault and proceeded to crack over 3,000 safe deposit boxes. Authorities believe that the thieves broke into the Buer branch of the bank over the weekend, although it was not discovered by the police until a fire alarm went off early on Monday 29 December.