September 27 in History

The Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) was a railway company that operated in north-east England from 1825 to 1863. The world's first public railway to use steam locomotives, its first line connected collieries near Shildon with Darlington and Stockton in County Durham, and was officially opened on 27 September 1825. The movement of coal to ships rapidly became a lucrative business, and the line was soon extended to a new port at Middlesbrough. While coal waggons were hauled by steam locomotives from the start, passengers were carried in coaches drawn by horses until carriages hauled by steam locomotives were introduced in 1833.

Ellen Southard was an American full-rigged merchant ship from Bath, Maine, that was built in 1863 by prominent shipbuilder T.J. Southard. She plied international trade routes for twelve years, calling at ports as far away as Sydney.

The Ford Piquette Avenue Plant is a former automobile factory located within the Milwaukee Junction area of Detroit, Michigan, United States. Built in 1904, it was the second center of automobile production for the Ford Motor Company, after the Ford Mack Avenue Plant. At the Piquette Avenue Plant, the company created and first produced the Ford Model T, the car credited with initiating the mass use of automobiles in the United States. Prior to the Model T, several other car models were assembled at the factory. Early experiments using a moving assembly line to make cars were also conducted there. It was also the first factory where more than 100 cars were assembled in one day. While headquartered at the Piquette Avenue Plant, Ford Motor Company became the biggest U.S.-based automaker, and it remained so until the mid-1920s. The factory was used by the company until 1910, when its car production activity was relocated to the new, larger Highland Park Ford Plant.

Constantine I was King of Greece from 18 March 1913 to 11 June 1917 and again from 19 December 1920 to 27 September 1922. The eldest son of George I of Greece, he succeeded to the throne following his father's assassination in 1913.

Robert Tyre Jones Jr. was an American amateur golfer who was one of the most influential figures in the history of the sport; he was also a lawyer by profession. Jones founded and helped design Augusta National Golf Club, and co-founded the Masters Tournament. The innovations that he introduced at the Masters have been copied by virtually every professional golf tournament in the world.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, the latter enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the only nuclear weapons used in war. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 60 to 75 million people. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides, including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

SS Patrick Henry was the first Liberty ship launched. It was built by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation at their Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard in Baltimore, Maryland. She was named after Patrick Henry, an American attorney, planter, and Founding Father as well as the first and sixth post-colonial Governor of Virginia, from 1776 to 1779 and 1784 to 1786.

The Kassel Mission on 27 September 1944 was also known as the air battle over the Seulingswald. The mission aimed to destroy the factories in Kassel of the engineering works of Henschel & Sohn which built tracked armoured vehicles and their associated infrastructure. See bombing of Kassel in World War II.

Milburn Grant "Mel" Apt was a U.S. Air Force test pilot, and the first man to attain speeds faster than Mach 3. He was killed after separating from the Bell X-2 in his escape capsule during the record-setting flight that exceeded Mach 3. Shortly afterwards, Secretary of the Air Force Donald A. Quarles commended Apt, saying he was "flying faster than any human being has been known to fly."

The Yemen Arab Republic, also known as Yemen (Sanaʽa) and commonly referred to as North Yemen, was a country that existed from 1962 until its unification with the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen in 1990, in the northwestern part of what is now Yemen. Its capital was Sana'a. It bordered South Yemen to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the north and the Red Sea to the west, sharing maritime borders with Djibouti and the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.

The British Aircraft Corporation TSR-2 was a cancelled supersonic strike and reconnaissance aircraft designed by the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC). It was under development throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s for the Royal Air Force (RAF); the TSR-2 designation came from "Tactical Strike and Reconnaissance, Mach 2".

The last use of capital punishment in Spain took place on 27 September 1975 when two members of the armed left-wing Basque nationalist and separatist group ETA political-military and three members of the Spanish anti-Francoist Marxist–Leninist group Revolutionary Antifascist Patriotic Front (FRAP) were executed by firing squads after having been convicted and sentenced to death by military tribunals for the murder of police officers and civil guards. Spain was Western Europe's only dictatorship at the time of the executions and had been unpopular and internationally isolated in the post-war period due to its relations with Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s and the fact that its far-right autocratic leader, Francisco Franco, had come to power by overthrowing a democratically elected government. As a result, the executions resulted in substantial criticism of the Spanish government, both domestically and abroad. Reactions included street protests, attacks on Spanish embassies, international criticism of the Spanish government and diplomatic measures, such as the withdrawal of the ambassadors of fifteen European countries.

The National League for Democracy is a deregistered liberal democratic political party in Myanmar. It became the country's ruling party after a landslide victory in the 2015 general election but was overthrown in a coup d'état in February 2021 following another landslide election victory in 2020.

The Sukhumi massacre took place on 27 September 1993, during and after the fall of Sukhumi into separatist hands in the course of the War in Abkhazia. It was perpetrated against Georgian civilians of Sukhumi, mainly by militia forces of Abkhaz separatists and North Caucasian allies. It became part of a violent ethnic cleansing campaign carried out by the separatists.

The Julie N oil spill occurred on September 27, 1996, when the Liberian-flagged oil tanker Julie N struck the Million Dollar Bridge in Portland, Maine while carrying over 200,000 barrels (32,000 m3) of heating oil. An estimated 180,000 U.S. gallons of oil was spilled in the incident; about 38,000 U.S. gallons was never recovered.

The Zug massacre was a mass shooting that took place on 27 September 2001 in the parliament of the Canton of Zug, Switzerland. 57-year-old Friedrich Leibacher shot and killed 14 people in the parliament before killing himself. He was armed with an assault rifle, a pump-action shotgun, two handguns and a homemade bomb and had entered the building disguised as a police officer. All of the weapons used were legally obtained. It was the first time a Swiss politician was killed since the 19th century.

Dawn is a retired space probe that was launched by NASA in September 2007 with the mission of studying two of the three known protoplanets of the asteroid belt: Vesta and Ceres. In the fulfillment of that mission—the ninth in NASA's Discovery Program—Dawn entered orbit around Vesta on July 16, 2011, and completed a 14-month survey mission before leaving for Ceres in late 2012. It entered orbit around Ceres on March 6, 2015. In 2017, NASA announced that the planned nine-year mission would be extended until the probe's hydrazine fuel supply was depleted. On November 1, 2018, NASA announced that Dawn had depleted its hydrazine, and the mission was ended. The derelict probe remains in a stable orbit around Ceres.

A mass shooting occurred at a firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, on the afternoon of September 27, 2012. The attack took place inside Accent Signage Systems, where a former employee walked into the firm's building and fired a Glock 19 pistol. By the end of the day, five people were dead, including the gunman who committed suicide, and four others were injured, three of them critically. One of those critically injured died the following day, and another man succumbed to his wounds on October 10. It was the deadliest workplace shooting in Minnesota's history.

The September 2019 climate strikes, also known as the Global Week for Future, were a series of international strikes and protests to demand action be taken to address climate change, which took place from 20 to 27 September 2019. The strikes' key dates were 20 September, which was three days before the United Nations Climate Summit, and 27 September. The protests took place across 4,500 locations in 150 countries. The event stemmed from the Fridays for Future school strike for climate movement, inspired by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. The Guardian reported that roughly 6 million people participated in the events, whilst 350.org – a group that organised many of the protests – claim that 7.6 million people participated.