June 27

Zhu Zhanji, Yongle’s grandson, pulled Ming troops out of Vietnam and wanted foreign rulers to send tribute again. Few had come since the fleets stopped, so in 1430 he sent Zheng He out one last time.

Nana Sahib’s forces offered the besieged British garrison safe passage by boat, then opened fire at Satichaura Ghat. On 15 July about 200 women and children held at the Bibighar were killed; the British retook the town the next day and exacted savage revenge.

Sherman’s one frontal assault of the campaign, against dug-in Confederates on the mountain. It failed: about 4,000 casualties (NPS), three-quarters of them Union.

A civil war between the new imperial government, led by Satsuma and Chōshū, and forces loyal to the Tokugawa. It moved north across Japan for a year and a half and ended at Hakodate.

Enomoto Takeaki had sailed the shogunate’s fleet north and set up a government at Hakodate, with French officers among his men. When the star-shaped fort Goryōkaku gave in, the war was over. Enomoto was pardoned and served the Meiji state as a minister. Japanese calendar: Meiji 2, 5th month, 18th…

The prize drew a flood of amateur proofs, 621 in the first year. Edmund Landau is said to have had cards printed: “On page …, lines … to …, you will find an error.” The inflation of 1923 wiped out most of the money’s value.

Wilson, Bowers and Cherry-Garrard man-hauled through the polar night to collect emperor penguin eggs. Their thermometer read −77.5 °F (−60.8 °C). They took five eggs and brought three home. Cherry-Garrard called it the worst journey in the world.

Decreed this day. Abortion was banned except to save a woman’s life or health, and the fee for a divorce rose to 50 roubles for the first, 150 for the second and 300 for the third. Abortion was legal again from 1955.

President Jacobo Árbenz’s land reform took unused land from the United Fruit Company. The CIA’s Operation PBSuccess armed a small exile force, ran a rebel radio station and bombed the capital until the army abandoned him, and Árbenz resigned. A civil war followed from 1960 to 1996.

Barclays opened John Shepherd-Barron’s machine at its Enfield branch, and the comedy actor Reg Varney made the first withdrawal. It took paper vouchers marked with a faintly radioactive compound, and paid out 10 pounds at most.

The Hungarian and Austrian foreign ministers, Gyula Horn and Alois Mock, cut the wire for the cameras. The pictures went round the world and were watched closely in East Germany: the Iron Curtain had a hole, and thousands of East Germans took their summer holidays in Hungary.

The first images came back blurred. The mirror had been polished with great precision to the wrong shape, about 2.2 micrometres too flat at the edge, because a lens in the testing instrument sat 1.3 millimetres out of place. NASA became a punchline overnight.

Ninety years after it was set, Wiles collected the prize in Göttingen. Inflation had shrunk it to about 75,000 marks, roughly $50,000.

The prize drew a flood of amateur proofs, 621 in the first year. Edmund Landau is said to have had cards printed: “On page …, lines … to …, you will find an error.” The inflation of 1923 wiped out most of the money’s value.

In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association the Court struck down, 7–2, California’s ban on selling violent games to minors. Justice Scalia wrote for the majority: Like the protected books, plays, and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas—and even social messages—through…

On its fifth dive into the Mariana Trench, China’s first deep crewed submersible reached 7,062 m, three days after it first passed 7,000 m, and came back with water, sediment and an animal from the bottom.