Today In History – July 27 – US Congress Establishes State Department

1586 Walter Raleigh brings the 1st tobacco to England from Virginia

1689 Battle of Killicrankie: Jacobite Scottish Highlanders under Viscount Dundee defeat royalist force under General MacKay

1789 US Congress establishes Department of Foreign Affairs now referred to as the State Department

1866 Transatlantic telegraph cable successfully in second attempt comes ashore at Heart’s Content, Newfoundland laid out by Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Eastern steamship (1,686 miles long)

1921 Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolate insulin at the University of Toronto

Jul 27 in Film & TV
1940 Bugs Bunny, Warner Bros. cartoon character created by Tex Avery, Bob Givens (Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series), first debuts in “Wild Hare”

Jul 27 in Music
1982 Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s musical “Little Shop of Horrors” opens Off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theatre in NYC

Jul 27 in Sport
1999 Tony Hawk is the first skateboarder to land a “900”

Do you know this fact about today?Did You Know?
1st Christian missionary in Japan, Jesuit priest Francis Xavier reaches Japan but is not permitted to enter any port until 15 August

Would you believe this fact about today?
Queen Elizabeth II opens the 30th Olympics in London, United Kingdom (with some help from 007)

Famous Weddings
1365 Isabella of England marries Enguerrand of Coucy at Windsor

1857 Emperor of Mexico Maximilian I (25) weds princess Charlotte of Belgium (17) in Brussels

1927 British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (39) weds Elizabeth Carver in Chiswick, England