Today in History, December 27th
On December 27, 1831, HMS Beagle sailed with Charles Darwin aboard. Plus Radio City Music Hall's opening and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
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December 27 is best known as the day in 1831 when HMS Beagle sailed from England with a young Charles Darwin aboard, starting the voyage that led to his theory of evolution. The date also saw Radio City Music Hall open in New York in 1932 and the assassination of Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto in 2007.
The big story: Darwin Sets Sail on the Beagle (1831)
Charles Darwin was 22, a former medical student with a serious passion for collecting, when he was offered a berth aboard HMS Beagle. His job was to be the naturalist and gentleman companion to its captain, Robert FitzRoy, on a Royal Navy survey voyage. On December 27, 1831, the ship finally sailed from Plymouth, England. The trip would take five years. Darwin spent as much of it as he could on land, collecting fossils, rocks, plants and animals in South America and beyond. In the Galápagos Islands off Ecuador, he gathered finches from island after island. Their small differences later helped him work out the idea of natural selection. He returned to England in 1836 and spent more than two decades building his case, testing it against everything he had seen. When On the Origin of Species finally came out in 1859, it changed how people understood life on Earth, and it all traced back to a ship that left port two days after Christmas.
More events on December 27
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1900 | Temperance crusader Carry Nation smashed up the bar of the Carey Hotel in Wichita, Kansas, and was jailed. |
| 1904 | J.M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan opened at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London. |
| 1918 | Polish fighters, many of them World War I veterans, rose up against German troops in Poznań, beginning the Greater Poland Uprising. |
| 1932 | Radio City Music Hall opened in New York City. |
| 1935 | Regina Jonas became the first woman ordained as a rabbi. |
| 1944 | President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the seizure of Montgomery Ward properties after the company defied a wartime labor ruling. |
| 1968 | The Apollo 8 crew splashed down safely in the Pacific after the first crewed trip around the moon. |
| 2007 | Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi while campaigning for parliamentary elections. |
Born on December 27
- 1571: Johannes Kepler, German astronomer who worked out the laws of planetary motion.
- 1822: Louis Pasteur, French scientist behind germ theory and pasteurization.
- 1901: Marlene Dietrich, German-born film star and singer.
Sources
- Charles Darwin: History’s Most Famous Biologist, Natural History Museum (London)
- December 27: This Day in History, History.com
- What Happened on December 27, Britannica
- Apollo 8, NASA
- Johannes Kepler, Britannica
- Louis Pasteur, Britannica
- Marlene Dietrich, Britannica
