What happened on May 27 ?

366 - Procopius, Roman usurper (executed)

866 - Ordoño I, King of Asturias

927 - Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria

1444 - John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, English military leader (b. 1404)

1508 - Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan (b. 1452)

1525 - Thomas Muentzer, German rebel leader

1541 - Margaret Pole, 8th Countess of Salisbury (executed) (b. 1473)

1564 - John Calvin, French religious reformer (b. 1509)

1610 - François Ravaillac, French assassin of Henry IV of France (b. 1578)

1615 - Marguerite de Valois, "Queen Margot", 1st wife of Henry IV of France (b. 1553)

1661 - Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, Scottish religious dissident (executed) (b. 1607)

1675 - Gaspard Dughet, French painter (b. 1613)

1690 - Giovanni Legrenzi, Italian composer (b. 1626)

1702 - Dominique Bouhours, French critic (b. 1628)

1707 - Marquise de Montespan, French mistress of Louis XIV of France (b. 1641)

1781 - Giovanni Battista Beccaria, Italian physicist (b. 1716)

1797 - François-Noël Babeuf, French revolutionary and early socialist (b. 1760)

1831 - Jedediah Smith, American explorer (b. 1799)

1840 - Niccolò Paganini, Italian violinist and composer (b. 1782)

1896 - Aleksandr Grigorievich Stoletov, Russian physicist (b. 1839)

1910 - Robert Koch, German physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1843)

1926 - Sre?ko Kosovel, Slovenian poet (b. 1904)

1949 - Robert Ripley, American cartoonist (Ripley's Believe It or Not!) (b. 1890)

1960 - James Montgomery Flagg, American illustrator (b. 1877)

1964 - Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian politician (b. 1889)

1969 - Jeffrey Hunter, American actor (b. 1926)

1986 - Isma'il Raji' al-Faruqi, Palestinian-born philosopher and comparative religion scholar (b. 1921)

1987 - John Howard Northrop, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1891)

1989 - Arseny Tarkovsky, Russian poet (b. 1907)

1991 - Leopold Nowak, Austrian musicologist (b. 1904)

1992 - Uncle Charlie Osborne, American fiddler (b. 1890)

1993 - Mary Philbin, American actress (b. 1903)

1993 - Werner Stocker, German actor (b. 1955)

2000 - Crawford Murray MacLehose of Beoch, British Governor of Hong Kong (b. 1917)

2000 - Maurice Richard, Canadian hockey player (b. 1921)

2001 - Ramon Bieri, American actor (b. 1929)

2003 - Luciano Berio, Italian composer (b. 1925)

2006 - Craig Heyward, American football running back (b. 1966)

2006 - Paul Gleason, American actor (b. 1939)

2006 - Alex Toth, American cartoonist (b. 1928)

2006 - Rob Borsellino, American columnist (b. 1949)