TODAY IN HISTORY

 

John Adams appointed to negotiate peace terms with British

On September 27, 1779, the Continental Congress appoints John Adams to travel to France as minister plenipotentiary in charge of negotiating treaties of peace and commerce with Great Britain during the Revolutionary War.

Adams had traveled to Paris in 1778 to negotiate an alliance with France, but had been unceremoniously dismissed when Congress chose Benjamin Franklin as sole commissioner. Soon after returning to Massachusetts in mid-1779, Adams was elected as a delegate to the state convention to draw up a new constitution; he was involved in these duties when he learned of his new diplomatic commission. Accompanied by his young sons John Quincy and Charles, Adams sailed for Europe that November aboard the French ship Sensible, which sprang a leak early in the voyage and missed its original destination (Brest), instead landing at El Ferrol, in northwestern Spain. After an arduous journey by mule train across the Pyrenees and into France, Adams and his group reached Paris in early February 1780.

While in Paris, Adams wrote to Congress almost daily (sometimes several letters a day) sharing news about British politics, British and French naval activities and his general perspective on European affairs. Conditions were unfavorable for peace at the time, as the war was going badly for the Continental Army, and the blunt and sometimes confrontational Adams clashed with the French government, especially the powerful Foreign Minister Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes. In mid-June, Adams began a correspondence with Vergennes in which he pushed for French naval assistance, antagonizing both Vergennes and Franklin, who brought the matter to the attention of Congress.

By that time, Adams had departed France for Holland, where he was attempting to negotiate a loan from the Dutch. Before the end of the year, he was named American minister to the Netherlands, replacing Henry Laurens, who was captured at sea by the British. In June 1781, capitulating to pressure from Vergennes and other French diplomats, Congress acted to revoke Adams’ sole powers as peacemaker with Britain, appointing Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay and Laurens to negotiate alongside him.

The tide of the war was turning in America’s favor, and Adams returned to Paris in October 1782 to take up his part in the peace negotiations. As Jefferson didn’t travel to Europe and Laurens was in failing health after his release from the Tower of London, it was left to Adams, Jay and Franklin to represent American interests. Adams and Jay both distrusted the French government (in contrast with Franklin), but their differences of opinion and diplomatic styles allowed the team to negotiate favorable terms in the Peace of Paris (1783). The following year, Jefferson arrived to take Adams’ place as American minister to France, forming a lifelong bond with Adams and his family before the latter left to take up his new post as American ambassador to London and continue his distinguished record of foreign service on behalf of the new nation. 

1960S

1962

Rachel Carson’s "Silent Spring" is published

Rachel Carson’s watershed work Silent Spring is first published on September 27, 1962. Originally serialized in The New Yorker magazine, the book shed light on the damage that man-made pesticides inflict on the environment. 

RELIGION

1540

Jesuit order established

In Rome, the Society of Jesus—a Roman Catholic missionary organization—receives its charter from Pope Paul III. The Jesuit order played an important role in the Counter-Reformation and eventually succeeded in converting millions around the world to Catholicism.

GREAT BRITAIN

1960

British suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst dies

Sylvia Pankhurst, British suffragette and international socialist, dies in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at the age of 78. Born in Manchester, England, in 1882, Sylvia Pankhurst was the daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, a champion of woman suffrage who became active in the late 1880s.

WORLD WAR I

1915

John Kipling killed at the Battle of Loos

On September 27, 1915, Second Lieutenant John Kipling of the British army, the only son of Nobel Prize-winning author Rudyard Kipling, is killed at the Battle of Loos, in the Artois region of France. The Battle of Loos, part of a joint Allied offensive on the Western Front, began on September 25, 1915, and engaged 54 French and 13 British divisions on a front of some 90 kilometers running from Loos in the north to Vimy Ridge in the south. The death toll at Loos was greater than in any previous battle of the war. The names of the British soldiers killed on the opening day of battle alone filled four columns in London’s Times newspaper the following morning.

U.S. PRESIDENTS

1938

Franklin Roosevelt appeals to Hitler for peace

On September 27, 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt writes to German Chancellor Adolf Hitler regarding the threat of war in Europe. The German chancellor had been threatening to invade the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia and, in the letter, his second to Hitler in as many days,Roosevelt reiterated the need to find a peaceful resolution to the issue.

WESTWARD EXPANSION

1869

Sheriff Wild Bill Hickok proves too wild for Kansas

Just after midnight on September 27, 1869, Ellis County Sheriff Wild Bill Hickok and his deputy respond to a report that a local ruffian named Samuel Strawhun and several drunken buddies were tearing up John Bitter’s Beer Saloon in Hays City, Kansas. 

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1991

"My Own Private Idaho” premieres in theaters

On September 27, 1991, My Own Private Idaho, an independent film written and directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix, premieres at the New York Film Festival. The movie told the story of two young male hustlers, one of whom (Phoenix) is a hapless narcoleptic searching for the mother who abandoned him, and the other of whom (Reeves) comes from a wealthy family (the character was inspired, in part, by Shakespeare’s Prince Hal in Henry IV). The pair meets in Portland, Oregon, and later travels to Idaho and Italy. My Own Private Idaho–the title reportedly came from a song by the rock band the B-52s–was nominated for six Independent Spirit Awards and won for Best Screenplay, Best Male Lead (Phoenix) and Best Film Music.

19TH CENTURY

1854

Ships collide off Newfoundland, killing 322

Sudden and heavy fog causes two ships to collide, killing 322 people off the coast of Newfoundland on September 27, 1854. The Arctic was a luxury ship, built in 1850 to carry passengers across the Atlantic Ocean. 

CRIME

1989

Zsa Zsa Gabor storms out of the courtroom

Hollywood socialite Zsa Zsa Gabor, on trial for slapping a police officer, storms out of the courtroom in the middle of the district attorney’s closing argument. The prosecutor told the jury that Gabor “craves media attention . . . and abused two weeks of this process for her own self-aggrandizement.” Although her attorney objected when the prosecutor said, “the defendant doesn’t know the meaning of truth,” Gabor was already running out in tears.

WORLD WAR II

1940

The Tripartite Pact is signed by Germany, Italy and Japan

On September 27, 1940, the Axis powers are formed as Germany, Italy and Japan become allies with the signing of the Tripartite Pact in Berlin. The Pact provided for mutual assistance should any of the signatories suffer attack by any nation not already involved in the war.

WORLD WAR II

1939

Warsaw falls to German forces

On September 27, 1939, 140,000 Polish troops are taken prisoner by the German invaders as Warsaw surrenders to Hitler’s army. The Poles fought bravely, but were able to hold on for only 26 days.