July 27

Today in History
• 1549 - 1st Christian missionary in Japan, Jesuit priest Francis Xavier
• 1566 - Tribunal convicts Agnes Waterhouse of witchcraft
• 1586 - Walter Raleigh brings the 1st tobacco to England from Virginia
• 1655 - Jews of New Amsterdam petition for a Jewish cemetery
• 1694 - Bank of England granted 12 year charter by Act of Parliament
• 1789 - US Congress establishes Department of Foreign Affairs
• 1837 - US Mint opens in Charlotte, North Carolina
• 1862 - Steamer "Golden Gate" burns and sinks off west coast of Mexico


Holidays - Traditional and Obscure
• Ashura
• Birthday of Dr. Jose Celso Barbosa
• Fast of Ninth of Av
• Iglesia ni Cristo Day
• National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day
• National New Jersey Day
• Norfolk Day
• Tassoua

Birthdays
• 774 - Kukai, Japanese Buddhist monk (founded Shingon school of Buddhism)
• 1612 - Murad IV, Sultan of Turkey (1623-40)
• 1625 - Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich
• 1733 - Jeremiah Dixon, English surveyor and astronomer
• 1752 - Samuel Smith, American politician, Senator and Representative from Maryland
• 1848 - Friedrich Ernst Dorn, German physicist who discovered radon from radium
• 1857 - Jose Celso Barbosa, born in Puerto Rico, found Federalist Party in 1900
• 1903 - Michail Stasinopoulos, Greek politician and 1st President of Greece