On Sept. 27, 1779, John Adams was named to negotiate the Revolutionary War’s peace terms with Britain.
In 1854 the first disaster involving an Atlantic liner occurred when the steamship Arctic sank with 300 people.
In 1938 the British ocean liner Queen Elizabeth was launched.
In 1939 Warsaw capitulated to the German invasion force after 19 days of resistance.
In 1954 “Tonight!” with host Steve Allen premiered on NBC.
In 1959 a typhoon battered Japan’s main island, Honshu, killing nearly 5,000 people.
In 1964 the Warren Commission issued a report concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in assassinating President John Kennedy.
In 1993 retired Gen. James Doolittle at 96 died in Pebble Beach, Calif.
In 1994 some 350 Republican congressional candidates gathered on the Capitol steps to sign the “Contract with America.”
In 1996 the Taliban, a band of militant former Islamic seminary students, drove the Afghan government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani out of Kabul and executed former Soviet-appointed leader, Najibullah.
In 1999 Detroit’s Tiger Stadium closed after 87 years.
In 2000, in Sydney, the U.S. Olympic baseball team beat Cuba 4-0 to capture its first baseball gold medal.
In 2002 President Bush said the UN should have a chance to force Iraq to give up its weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. acted on its own, but he told a Republican fundraising event in Denver that action had to come quickly.
