Born on this Day 27th March
1863 Sir Henry Royce
1899 Gloria Swanson
1924 Sarah Vaughan
1927 Stanislav Rostropovich
1927 Harry Belafonte
1935 Julian Glover
1942 Michael York
1950 Tony Banks
1963 Quentin Tarantino
1970 Mariah Carey
1971 David Coulthard

Died on this Day
1625 King James
1968 Yuri Gagarin
1991 Ralph Bates

Music

1965 Cliff Richard’s first recorded American single ‘The Minute You’re Gone’ entered the UK Top 20. It was recoded in Nashville with top country producer Billy Sherrill.

1968 British group Grapefruit, sponsored by John Lennon, made their debut at the Royal Albert Hall, supporting the Bee Gees.

1976 The Brotherhood Of Man topped the charts with their Eurovision song ‘Save Your Kisses For Me’.

1981 The Wanderers released their debut single ‘Ready To Snap’ in the UK.

1986 TV show ‘The Mix’ was launched.

Sport

1988 Second Division Reading, making their first appearance at Wembley in their 117 year history, beat Luton Town by 4 goals to 1 in the final of the Simod Cup.

People & Showbiz

1956 Two students showing particular promise at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts were Richard Briers and Albert Finney.

1990 Actress Glenda Jackson was chosen as the Labour Party candidate for Hampstead and Highgate.

General Events

1794 The US Navy was formed.

1914 The first successful blood transfusion took place in Brussels.

1977 574 people were killed in the world’s worst aviation disaster when two aircraft collided and exploded in foggy conditions on the airstrip at Los Rodeos Airport at Tenerife.

1984 The Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe was moved to Broadmoor Hospital from Parkhurst prison after being confirmed as a paranoid schizophrenic.

1989 A state of emergency was declared in Alaska when 11 million gallons of crude oil from the crippled tanker Exxon Valdez spread over an area covering 100 square miles.

1995 A £2 coin to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War was launched by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kenneth Clarke.

1995 The Government allocated grants of £5 million for 100 schemes for closed circuit television cameras to protect town centres around the country.

1997 Hundreds of thousands of workers faced an Easter without pay after a computerized banking system crashed. The Association of Payment Clearing Services said that there was no way to tell how many accounts had been hit.