Today in History, 10/27

939: Edmund I succeeds Athelstan as King of England.
1275: Traditional founding of the city of Amsterdam.
1644: Second Battle of Newbury in the English Civil War.
1682: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is founded.
1728: James Cook is born.
1787: The first of the Federalist Papers, a series of essays calling for ratification of the U.S. Constitution, is published in a New York newspaper.
1795: The United States and Spain sign the Treaty of Madrid, which establishes the boundaries between Spanish colonies and the U.S.
1810: United States annexes the former Spanish colony of West Florida.
1838: Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Extermination Order, which orders all Mormons to leave the state or be exterminated.1858: Teddy Roosevelt is born.1904: The first underground New York City Subway line opens; the system becomes the biggest in United States, and one of the biggest in world.
1911: Leif Erickson is born. He plays the dad possesed by evil aliens in the 50's classic Invaders from Mars.

1936: Mrs Wallis Simpson filed for divorce which would eventually allow her to marry King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, thus forcing his abdication from the throne.1939: John Cleese is born.

1940: John Gotti is born.1946: Ivan Reitman is born. He directed Ghostbusters, Animal House, and Dave, among others.
1953: Robert Picardo is born. He played the irascible holographic doctor on Star Trek: Voyager.

1954: Benjamin O. Davis Jr. becomes the first African-American general in the United States Air Force.1958: Simon Le Bon, singer for Duran Duran, is born.

1962: Major Rudolph Anderson of the United States Air Force became the only direct human casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis when his U-2 reconnaissance airplane was shot down in Cuba by a Soviet-supplied SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile.
1964: Ronald Reagan delivers a speech on behalf of Republican candidate for president, Barry Goldwater. The speech launched his political career and came to be known as "A Time for Choosing".
2004: The Boston Red Sox win their first World Series in 86 years by defeating the St. Louis Cardinals four games to none.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.