Today in History: April 27, deadly Alabama tornadoes
Today in History: April 27, deadly Alabama tornadoes
FILE - In this April 27, 2011 file photo, residents survey the destruction after a tornado hit Pratt City, Ala., just north of downtown Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo/Butch Dill, file)
Company officials stand in front of the tangled wreckage of the construction framework that fell at a power plant at St. Marys, West Virginia, April 27, 1978. The scaffold fell from the upper edge of the wall in rear. (AP Photo/Richard Greenawalt)
Firefighters battle a blaze, Monday, April 27, 2015, after rioters plunged part of Baltimore into chaos, torching a pharmacy, setting police cars ablaze and throwing bricks at officers. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, along with the four living former Presidents and their wives, attend the funeral service of former President Richard Nixon in Yorba Linda, California, Wednesday, April 27, 1994. From left are: the Clintons, George and Barbara Bush, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, and Gerald and Betty Ford. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)
FILE - In this April 27, 2012, file photo, space shuttle Enterprise, riding on the back of the NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft performs a fly-by above JFK International Airport, in New York. Enterprise has been separated from the NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier at John F. Kennedy International Airport, just weeks after flying over New York City. Next month it will be taken by barge to the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, the floating air-and-space museum that will be the shuttle’s permanent home. The shuttle is scheduled to open to the public in mid-July. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
FILE - In this April 27, 2011 file photo, residents survey the destruction after a tornado hit Pratt City, Ala., just north of downtown Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo/Butch Dill, file)
FILE - In this April 27, 2011 file photo, residents survey the destruction after a tornado hit Pratt City, Ala., just north of downtown Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo/Butch Dill, file)
Company officials stand in front of the tangled wreckage of the construction framework that fell at a power plant at St. Marys, West Virginia, April 27, 1978. The scaffold fell from the upper edge of the wall in rear. (AP Photo/Richard Greenawalt)
Company officials stand in front of the tangled wreckage of the construction framework that fell at a power plant at St. Marys, West Virginia, April 27, 1978. The scaffold fell from the upper edge of the wall in rear. (AP Photo/Richard Greenawalt)
Firefighters battle a blaze, Monday, April 27, 2015, after rioters plunged part of Baltimore into chaos, torching a pharmacy, setting police cars ablaze and throwing bricks at officers. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Firefighters battle a blaze, Monday, April 27, 2015, after rioters plunged part of Baltimore into chaos, torching a pharmacy, setting police cars ablaze and throwing bricks at officers. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, along with the four living former Presidents and their wives, attend the funeral service of former President Richard Nixon in Yorba Linda, California, Wednesday, April 27, 1994. From left are: the Clintons, George and Barbara Bush, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, and Gerald and Betty Ford. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)
President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, along with the four living former Presidents and their wives, attend the funeral service of former President Richard Nixon in Yorba Linda, California, Wednesday, April 27, 1994. From left are: the Clintons, George and Barbara Bush, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, and Gerald and Betty Ford. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)
FILE - In this April 27, 2012, file photo, space shuttle Enterprise, riding on the back of the NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft performs a fly-by above JFK International Airport, in New York. Enterprise has been separated from the NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier at John F. Kennedy International Airport, just weeks after flying over New York City. Next month it will be taken by barge to the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, the floating air-and-space museum that will be the shuttle’s permanent home. The shuttle is scheduled to open to the public in mid-July. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
FILE - In this April 27, 2012, file photo, space shuttle Enterprise, riding on the back of the NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft performs a fly-by above JFK International Airport, in New York. Enterprise has been separated from the NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier at John F. Kennedy International Airport, just weeks after flying over New York City. Next month it will be taken by barge to the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, the floating air-and-space museum that will be the shuttle’s permanent home. The shuttle is scheduled to open to the public in mid-July. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
Today’s Highlight in History:
On April 27, 2011, powerful and deadly tornadoes raked the South and Midwest; more than 60 tornadoes crossed parts of Alabama, leaving about 250 people dead and thousands of others injured in the state.
On this date:
In 1521, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed by natives in the Philippines.
In 1810, Ludwig van Beethoven wrote one of his most famous piano compositions, the Bagatelle in A-minor.
In 1813, the Battle of York took place in Upper Canada during the War of 1812 as a U.S. force defeated the British garrison in present-day Toronto before withdrawing.
In 1865, the steamer Sultana, carrying freed Union prisoners of war, exploded on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tennessee; death toll estimates vary from 1,500 to 2,000.
In 1941, German forces occupied Athens during World War II.
In 1973, acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray resigned after it was revealed that he’d destroyed files removed from the safe of Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt.
In 1978, 51 construction workers plunged to their deaths when a scaffold inside a cooling tower at the Pleasants Power Station site in West Virginia fell 168 feet to the ground.
In 1992, Russia and 12 other former Soviet republics won entry into the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
In 1994, former President Richard M. Nixon was remembered at an outdoor funeral service attended by all five of his successors at the Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda, California.
In 2010, former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was extradited from the United States to France, where he was later convicted of laundering drug money and received a seven-year sentence.
In 2011, powerful and deadly tornadoes raked the South and Midwest; more than 60 tornadoes crossed parts of Alabama, leaving about 250 people dead and thousands of others injured in the state.
In 2012, the space shuttle Enterprise, mounted atop a jumbo jet, sailed over the New York City skyline on its final flight before becoming a museum piece aboard the USS Intrepid.
In 2015, rioters plunged part of Baltimore into chaos, torching a pharmacy, setting police cars ablaze and throwing bricks at officers hours after thousands attended a funeral for Freddie Gray, a Black man who died from a severe spinal injury he’d suffered in police custody; the Baltimore Orioles’ home game against the Chicago White Sox was postponed because of safety concerns.
In 2017, David Dao, the airline passenger who was violently dragged off a flight after refusing to give up his seat, settled with United for an undisclosed sum; cellphone video of the April 9 confrontation aboard a jetliner at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport had sparked widespread public outrage over the way Dao was treated.
In 2019, a gunman opened fire inside a synagogue near San Diego as worshippers celebrated the last day of Passover, killing a woman and wounding the rabbi and two others. (John Earnest, a white supremacist, has been sentenced to both federal and state life prison terms.)
In 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased its guidelines on the wearing of masks outdoors, saying fully vaccinated Americans didn’t need to cover their faces anymore unless they were in a big crowd of strangers; those who were unvaccinated could also go outside without masks in some situations.
In 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour for federal contractors, providing a pay bump to hundreds of thousands of workers.
In 2022, Russia cut off natural gas to NATO members Poland and Bulgaria and threatened to do the same to other countries, using its most essential export as an attempt to punish and divide the West for its united support of Ukraine. The United States and Russia carried out an unexpected prisoner exchange in a time of high tensions over the war in Ukraine, trading a Marine veteran jailed by Moscow for a convicted Russian drug trafficker serving a long prison sentence in America.
In 2022, World leaders and the U.S. political and foreign policy elite gathered at Washington’s National Cathedral to pay their respects to the late Madeleine Albright, America’s first female secretary of state.