- In 1667 on this date, a blind and impoverished poet named John Milton sold his greatest work, Paradise Lost, to a printer for £10, so that it could be entered into the Stationers’ Register, which was an early form of copyright protection and censorship mechanism rolled into one.
- The year was A.D. 1805, and the United States Marines and Berbers attacked the Tripolitan city of Derna on the 27th of April, referenced in the “shores of Tripoli” in the well-known Marines’ Hymn.
- On April 27, 1861, Abraham Lincoln — having served as president of the United States for less than two months — suspended the writ of habeas corpus, twelve days after he had declared that an insurrection was underway.
- As World War II neared its European conclusion, Benito Mussolini was arrested — on the 27th day of the fourth month of 1945 — in the act of fleeing . . . disguised as a German soldier.
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Twenty-Seventh of April
