Shimla, Oct. 27 Keekli Bureau
2017
Catalonia’s parliament voted to declare the region independent from Spain, resulting in the central government’s dismissing that legislative body and calling for new elections, in which the majority of seats were claimed by the pro-independence movement.
2014
American singer Taylor Swift released 1989, which she described as her first “official pop album”; it was a blockbuster hit and won the Grammy Award for album of the year.
2004
The Boston Red Sox ended the “Curse of the Bambino”—an alleged hex on the team that resulted from its 1920 sale of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees—by defeating the St. Louis Cardinals to win the World Series title, the team’s first in 86 years.
2000
At a concert near Tel Aviv, the music of German composer Richard Wagner, which many associate with the Nazi regime, was played for the first time in public in Israel.
1979
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, an island country lying within the Lesser Antilles in the eastern Caribbean Sea, achieved its independence.
1968
Physicist Lise Meitner, whose research (along with that of Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann) led to the discovery of nuclear fission, died in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England.
1961
The first Saturn rocket was successfully launched, and years later the Saturn V was the launch vehicle used in the Apollo Moon-landing flights.
1932
American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath—whose best-known works are preoccupied with alienation, death, and self-destruction—was born.
1795
Pinckney’s Treaty, an agreement between the United States and Spain, was signed, giving the United States navigation rights on the Mississippi River.
1492
Christopher Columbus sailed to Cuba and claimed the island for Spain.
939
Athelstan, the first king to rule over all of England, died.
