Browse Historical Events by Day: What Happened on December 27th?

The Roman emperor Augustus officially adopts his stepson and heir, Tiberius, as his son.

The death of Chrysaphius, a eunuch advisor to the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, who played a controversial role in the court.

The Gothic War, fought between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Ostrogoths, sees a significant battle at Taginae, resulting in a Byzantine victory.

The University of Oxford receives its royal charter from King Henry III of England.

British naturalist Charles Darwin sets out from Plymouth, England, aboard the HMS Beagle on a five-year voyage to the Pacific Ocean including the Galapagos Island in South America and New Zealand. Darwin's discoveries while visiting such diverse places gave him the basis to develop his theory of evolution published in 1859, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection." More

President Franklin Roosevelt, asserting wartime emergency powers, orders his secretary of commerce to seize the plants and facilities of Montgomery Ward which was in the middle of a labor strike affecting the flow of war supplies. Montgomery Ward appealed the government action in Federal Court, but lost. More