March 27

• 1972 Eight people, seven of them young girls, died when fire destroyed the offices of Noyek’s timber merchants in Parnell Street, Dublin.
• 1972 Eight people, seven of them young girls, died when fire destroyed the offices of Noyek’s timber merchants in Parnell Street, Dublin.
• 1968 Yuri Gagarin (34), Russian pilot and cosmonaut who was the first man in outer space (1961), died when his jet crashed during a training flight.
• 1940 Michael Joseph Savage, the son of Irish parents and New Zealand’s first Labour prime minister (since 1935), died.
• 1766 The vicar of Wakefield, subtitled ‘A Tale, Supposed to be written by Himself’, a novel by Oliver Goldsmith (1728–74), was published.