From Historynet: Today in History December 27

1512          The laws of Burgos give New World natives legal protection against abuse and authorize Negro slavery.

1831          HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin  on board, departs from Plymouth. It will eventually visit the Galapagos Islands where Darwin will form his theories on evolution.

1862          Union General William Rosecrans'  army begins moving slowly toward Murfreesboro, Tennessee, from Nashville.

1913          Charles Moyer, president of the Miners Union, is shot in the back and dragged through the streets of Chicago.

1915          In Ohio, iron and steel workers go on strike for an eight-hour day and higher wages.

1932          Radio City Music Hall opens.

1933          Josef Stalin  calls tensions with Japan a grave danger.

1939          A series of vicious earthquakes take 11,000 lives in Turkey.

1941          Japanese bombers attack Manila, despite its claim as an open city.

1944          General George S. Patton's Third Army, spearheaded by the 4th Armored Division, relieves the surrounded city of Bastogne in Belgium.

1945          The International Monetary Fund and the Bank for Reconstruction and Development are created.

1947          The new Italian constitution is promulgated in Rome.

1950          The United States and Spain resume relations for the first time since the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.

1956          Segregation on buses in Tallahassee, Florida, is outlawed.

1968          The United States agrees to sell F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.

1979          President Hafizullah Amin of Afghanistan is ousted and murdered in a coup backed by the Soviet Union, beginning a war that will last more than 10 years.

1983          President Reagan takes all responsibility for the lack of security in Beirut that allowed a terrorist on a suicide mission to kill 241 Marines.

1984          Four Polish officers are tried for the slaying of Reverend Jerzy Popieluszko.

1985          Palestinian guerrillas kill 18 people at airports in Rome and Vienna.

1996          Taliban forces retake strategic Bagram Airfield during Afghan civil war.

2001          China receives permanent normal trade relations with the US.

2004          Radiation reaches Earth from the brightest extrasolar event ever witnessed, an explosion of magnetar SGR 1806-20.

2007          Former Pakistani prime minister 

Benazir Bhutto  assassinated.

2007          After Mwai Kibaki is declared the winner of Kenya's presidential elections, rioting begins in Mombasa, precipitating an economic, humanitarian and political crisis.