On This Day: July 27

Updated July 26, 2014, 11:01 pm

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On July 27, 1953, the Korean War armistice was signed at Panmunjom, ending three years of fighting.

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On July 27, 1905, Leo Durocher, the American baseball player and manager, was born. Following his death on October 7, 1991, his obituary appeared in The Times.

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On This Date

1694 The Bank of England received a royal charter as a commercial institution.
1789 Congress established the Department of Foreign Affairs, the forerunner of the State Department.
1794 French revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre was overthrown and placed under arrest; he was executed the following day.
1861 Union Gen. George B. McClellan was put in command of the Army of the Potomac.
1866 After two failures, Cyrus W. Field succeeded in laying the first underwater telegraph cable between North America and Europe.
1940 Bugs Bunny made his debut in the Warner Bros. animated cartoon "A Wild Hare."
1960 Vice President Richard M. Nixon was nominated for president at the Republican National Convention in Chicago.
1967 In the wake of urban rioting, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to assess the causes of the violence.
1974 The House Judiciary Committee voted 27-11 to recommend President Richard M. Nixon's impeachment on a charge that he had personally engaged in a "course of conduct" designed to obstruct justice in the Watergate case.
1980 The deposed Shah of Iran died in Egypt at age 60.
1995 The Korean War Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C.
1996 A pipe bomb exploded at a public park during the Olympic games in Atlanta, killing one person and injuring more than 100.
2003 Comedian Bob Hope died at age 100.
2003 Lance Armstrong won a record-tying fifth straight Tour de France title.
2005 Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian who'd plotted to bomb the Los Angeles airport on the eve of the millennium, was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Historic Birthdays

24 Charlotte Corday 7/27/1768 - 7/17/1793
French revolutionary assassin of Jean-Paul Marat
82 Hilaire Belloc 7/27/1870 - 7/16/1953
French-born English historian, biographer, poet and novelist
82 Geoffrey De Havilland 7/27/1882 - 5/21/1965
English manufacturer and aircraft designer
58 Charles Vidor 7/27/1900 - 6/4/1959
Hungarian-born motion-picture director