On December 27, ...

... 1979, fighters aided by the troops from the Soviet Union deposed and executed Hafizullah Amin, President of Afghanistan. "The Afghan radio announced in a broadcast monitored here that Mr. Amin had been sentenced to death at a revolutionary trial for 'crimes against the state,'" according to the New York Times. The coup marked the beginning of Soviet involvement the Central Asian country that would last for a decade, ending in 1989 when "[t]he last Soviet soldier came home from Afghanistan ... leaving behind a war that had become a domestic burden and an international embarrassment for Moscow."
... 1985, a few weeks before she would have turned 54, the San Francisco-born woman who had devoted her life to the study and preservation of the mountain gorillas, Dr. Dian Fossey, was found dead from machete wounds in her cabin in Karisoke, Rwanda. The crime never was solved. A Fund continues the work of Fossey, pictured above with the gorilla she named Puck.