Dec. 27 history: 'Peter Pan'

 Dec. 27 inn history

In 1900, prohibitionist Carry Nation smashes up the bar at the Carey Hotel in Wichita, Kansas, causing several thousand dollars in damage and landing in jail. Nation, who was released shortly after the incident, became famous for carrying a hatchet and wrecking saloons as part of her anti-alcohol crusade.

In 1904, James Barrie’s play “Peter Pan: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up” opened at the Duke of York’s Theater in London.

In 1932, New York City’s Radio City Music Hall first opened.

In 1945, 28 nations signed an agreement creating the World Bank.

In 1958, American physicist James Van Allen reported the discovery of a second radiation belt around Earth, in addition to one found earlier in the year.

In 1979, Soviet forces seized control of Afghanistan. President Hafizullah Amin, who was overthrown and executed, was replaced by Babrak Karmal.

In 1985, Palestinian gunmen opened fire inside the Rome and Vienna airports in terrorist attacks that killed 19 people; four attackers were slain by police and security personnel.

In 1985, American naturalist Dian Fossey, 53, who had studied gorillas in the wild in Rwanda, was found hacked to death. Fossey was a primatologist and conservationist known for undertaking an extensive study of mountain gorilla groups in Rwanda. Gorillas in the Mist, a book published two years before her death, recounts Fossey's account of her scientific study of the gorillas at Karisoke Research Center. 

In 1995, Israeli jeeps sped out of the West Bank town of Ramallah, capping a 7-week pullout giving Yasser Arafat control over 90% of the West Bank’s 1M Palestinian residents and one-third of its land.

In 1999, space shuttle Discovery and its 7-member crew returned to Earth after fixing the Hubble Space Telescope.

In 2001, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced that Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners would be held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In 2002, a defiant North Korea ordered U.N. nuclear inspectors to leave the country and said it would restart a laboratory capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons; the U.N. nuclear watchdog said its inspectors were “staying put” for the time being.

In 2012, retired Army general Norman Schwarzkopf, as head of United States Central Command, led forces against Iraq in the Gulf War, died in Tampa, Fla., at age 78.

In 2016, actor Carrie Fishe, 60, died in a hospital four days after suffering a medical emergency aboard a flight to Los Angeles. (Her mother, Debbie Reynolds, would die the following day.) 

(History.com 12/27/23)