April 27
Published in On this Day listing- 1822 Ulysses Simpson Grant, general in the Union army and 18th president of the United States (1869–77), born in Ohio.
- 1521 Ferdinand Magellan (c. 40), Portuguese navigator, was killed by natives on the island of Mactan in the Philippines during the first circumnavigation of the Earth.
- 1920 The IRA attacked the RIC station at Ballylanders, Co. Limerick. The Black and Tans terrorised Limerick city the following day.
- 1967 The Abortion Act, making abortion legal up to 28 weeks’ gestation, came into effect in the UK, with the exception of Northern Ireland.
- 1953 Maud Gonne MacBride, revolutionary and iconic figure in nationalist mythology, died.
- 1916 Outside Hulluch, north of Loos in northern France, the 16th (Irish) Division suffered one of the heaviest gas attacks of the First World War; 538 men died and a further 1,590 were injured.
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