April 27, 1773: The British Parliament passed the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company from bankruptcy by greatly lowering the tea tax it paid to the British government and, thus, granting it a de facto monopoly on the American tea trade.
British Prime Minister, Frederick, Lord North, who initiated the legislation, thought it impossible that the colonists would protest cheap tea; he was wrong. Many colonists viewed the act as yet another example of taxation tyranny, precisely because it left an earlier duty on tea entering the colonies in place, while removing the duty on tea entering England.
In December 1773, the colonists showed Lord North how wrong he had been. The patriots, disguised as Mohawk Indians, boarded British ships carrying East India Company tea and dumped the tea chests, valued then at nearly $1 million in today’s money, into the water.

April 27, 1865: An explosion on a Mississippi River steamboat killed an estimated 1,547 people, mostly Union soldiers returning home after the Civil War. The previous day had marked the final surrender and end of armed resistance by the remaining Confederate forces.
Only two weeks earlier, President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated. Prisoners of war who had been held in hellish conditions in Alabama’s Andersonville and Cahaba prison camps were trying to make their way home to Illinois. The steamboat Sultana was one of their only options.
The steamboat was built to hold 376 passengers, but reports say that there were as many as 2,700 people on board as it lumbered slowly up the Mississippi River. It took 17 hours to make the journey from Vicksburg to Memphis, where it stopped to pick up more coal.
A couple of hours past midnight, the trip came to a sudden end: near the Arkansas side of the river, one of the Sultana‘s three boilers suddenly exploded. Hot metal debris ripped through the vessel and two other boilers exploded within minutes of the first. The passengers were killed by flying metal, scalding water, collapsing decks and the roaring fire that broke out on board. Some drowned as they were thrown into the water, but rescue boats were immediately dispatched, saving hundreds of lives.

April 27, 1945: Russian and American troops joined hands at the River Elbe in Germany, bringing the end of World War II a step closer. By joining forces at Elbe, the American and Soviet troops successfully cut the Germany army in two.
President Harry S Truman proclaimed, “This is not the hour of final victory in Europe, but the hour draws near, the hour for which all the American people, all the British people and all the Soviet people have toiled and prayed so long.”

April 27, 1947: The New York Yankees hosted Babe Ruth Day at Yankee Stadium. The event was held to honor the ailing baseball star, who was nearing the end of his life because of throat cancer.

April 27, 1956: World heavyweight champ Rocky Marciano retired from boxing at age 31, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. Marciano ended his career as the only heavyweight champion with a perfect record – 49 wins in 49 professional bouts, with 43 knockouts.

April 27, 1965: Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow died of cancer at the age of 57. Murrow’s career with the Columbia Broadcasting Company spanned 25 years. It ended in January, 1961, when President Kennedy named him head of the United States Information Agency.

April 27, 1968: Vice President Hubert Humphrey announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. In an interview, he said he supported the current U.S. policy of sending troops “where required by our own national security.”
President Lyndon B. Johnson, frustrated with his inability to reach a solution in Vietnam, had announced that he would neither seek nor accept the nomination of his party for re-election.
When the Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago in August, a conflict immediately erupted over the party’s Vietnam platform. While demonstrations against the war took place in the streets outside the convention hall, Humphrey won the party nomination. He was ultimately defeated in the general election by Republican Richard Nixon, who criticized the Johnson’s handling of the war and ran on a platform of achieving “peace with honor” in Vietnam.

April 27, 1982: John W. Hinckley Jr. went on trial in Washington, D.C., in the shooting of President Ronald Reagan. He was acquitted by reason of insanity.

April 27, 1987: The Justice Department barred Austrian President Kurt Waldheim from entering the United States, saying he had aided in the deportation and execution of thousands of Jews and others as a German Army officer during World War II.
Although he had served as U.N. Secretary-General from 1972-1981, Waldheim’s past as an officer in the mounted corps of the SA was revealed when he ran for President of Austria, although declassified CIA documents showed that the CIA had been aware of his wartime past since 1945.

April 27, 1994: More than 22 million South Africans turned out to cast ballots in the country’s first multiracial parliamentary elections. An overwhelming majority chose anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela to head a new coalition government that included his African National Congress Party, former President F.W. de Klerk’s National Party, and Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party. In May, Mandela was inaugurated as president, becoming South Africa’s first black head of state.