On April 27

On this day in ...
... 1984 (25 years ago today), Britain's siege of of the Libyan Embassy in London ended when the 30 diplomats within "simply walked out." The incident had begun 11 days earlier, during a demonstration against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi; 25-year-old British police officer Yvonne Fletcher had been shot dead during that demonstration. "In 1999, Libya admitted 'general responsibility'" for the killing of Fletcher (right), according to the BBC, "and agreed to pay compensation to her family." No individual ever was charged with her death, which her family commemorated in a 25th anniversary ceremony earlier this month.
... 1992, the end of World War II came nearer as Soviet and American troops met at the Elbe River south of Berlin, thus cutting Nazi Germany's army in 2.
... 1956, U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey (D-Colo.) was born in Cresskill, N.J. She won the office by defeating Republican incumbent Marilyn Musgrave in the November 2008 election.

(Prior April 27 posts are here and here.)

On January 27, ...

... 1945, the Soviet Union's Red Army liberated Auschwitz. Located in southwestern Poland, the 5-year-old camp was the largest of the concentration camps run by the Nazis. In the photo at left, child detainees who had survived walk out of their barracks at the time of liberation.
At that time the BBC reported:

According to reports, hundreds of thousands of Polish people, as well as Jews from a number of other European countries, have been held prisoner there in appalling conditions and many have been killed in the gas chambers.

The full horror of the camp would come to be known over time. Among those who died there were citizens of the Soviet Union, Poland, France, Belgium, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Italy and Greece. Although the death toll once was estimated as high as 4 million, today the Auschwitz Museum places the number at "between 1 and 1.5 million, including 800,000 Jews." (photo courtesy of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
... 1416, for the 1st time a European governmental entity, the Republic of Dubrovnik, outlawed slavery.
... 1949, U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) was born in Greeley, Colorado.