27 aprile

Caracol’s Altar 21 records a “star war”, named for the glyph of a star showering the earth that marks the gravest defeats, against Tikal’s king Wak Chan K’awiil. Caracol boasted of it, but the victor was probably its overlord, the Snake king of Kaanul. Long Count 9.6.8.4.2 7 Ik’ 0 Sip

Waxaklajuun Ub’aah K’awiil (“18 Rabbit”) had filled Copán’s Great Plaza with stelae and dedicated its ballcourt that same year. Then K’ahk’ Tiliw Chan Yopaat of Quiriguá, a lord he had himself installed in 724, captured him and cut off his head. Long Count 9.15.6.14.6 6 Kimi 4 Sek

Louis Heyligen, a Flemish monk and musician to Cardinal Colonna, wrote to Bruges that 11,000 people had been buried in six weeks in a field Clement VI had bought for a cemetery, and that the pope had consecrated the Rhône so that bodies could be put in the river.

The grand prince of Moscow died of plague weeks after Metropolitan Theognostus and his own two young sons; his brother Andrei followed in June. The throne passed to his brother Ivan.

Magellan waded ashore with about 50 men to force the chief Lapulapu to submit, and was cut down in the shallows. Lapulapu is now a national hero of the Philippines.

London celebrated the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. At the public rehearsal in Vauxhall Gardens six days earlier, 12,000 people paid to listen and carriages jammed London Bridge for three hours. On the night, part of the wooden pavilion built for the fireworks caught fire.

Four days after reaching London the family spent six to nine in the evening with the King and Queen Charlotte, and left with 24 guineas. At a second visit in May the King put pieces by Wagenseil, J. C. Bach, Abel and Handel in front of Wolfgang, who played them all at sight, then accompanied the…

Yellept, a Walla Walla chief they had met on the way down, kept his promise to host them. He gave Clark “a very eligant white horse”, sold them food and firewood, lent them canoes to cross the river, and his people and their Yakama guests danced for them.

Two months after the February Revolution, a commission led by Victor Schœlcher wrote the decree that freed about 250,000 people in the French colonies, again with compensation for owners only.

Rome withdrew after Vesuvius erupted in 1906, and London built White City in ten months. The marathon was set at 26 miles 385 yards, from Windsor Castle to the royal box, the distance every marathon has run since 1921.

After a counter-revolution in Istanbul, known by its Rumi calendar date as the 31 March Incident, an army from Salonica took the capital and parliament deposed the sultan. He was sent into exile in Salonica.

Some batches from Cutter Laboratories held live poliovirus that the formaldehyde had failed to kill. The vaccine was withdrawn on 27 April, too late: Paul Offit counts about 40,000 cases of polio, 200 children left with some paralysis and 10 deaths. Federal oversight of vaccine makers was…

Pilots flew over the open core and dropped about 5,000 tonnes of boron carbide, dolomite, sand, clay and lead to smother the fire and filter what rose from it.

The worst-exposed operators and firefighters were flown to Clinical Hospital No. 6, the Soviet centre for radiation injury, where Angelina Guskova's team treated them. The American haematologist Robert Gale joined them in early May; of the 13 bone-marrow transplants, few helped.

At about 13:10 the town radio told residents to pack documents and food for three days. From 14:00 a column of about 1,200 buses carried out some 49,000 people in about three hours. They never came back to live.

Valery Legasov took his own life in Moscow, the day after the second anniversary. He left tape recordings about the accident and the failings that led to it.

The first election in which every adult could vote whatever their race. Nelson Mandela cast his ballot at Ohlange High School, near the grave of John Dube, the ANC’s first president. About 19.5 million votes were cast.

At seventy-five he cast his first vote near the grave of John Dube, the ANC’s first president. Across the country people queued for hours. The ANC won 62.65 per cent and 252 of the 400 seats in the National Assembly.