From Historynet: Today in History March 27

1350          While besieging Gibraltar, Alfonso XI of Castile  dies of the black death.

1512          Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon  sights Florida.

1802          The Treaty of Amiens is signed, ending the French Revolutionary War.

1814          U.S. troops under Gen. Andrew Jackson  inflict a crushing defeat on the Creek Indians at Horshoe Bend in Northern Alabama.

1836          The Mexican army massacres Texan rebels at Goliad.

1866          President Andrew Johnson  vetoes the civil rights bill, which later becomes the 14th amendment.

1884          The first long-distance telephone call is made from Boston to New York.

1899          The Italian inventor G. Marconi  achieves the first international radio transmission between England and France.

1900          The London Parliament passes the War Loan Act, which gives 35 million pounds to the Boer War cause.

1912          The first cherry blossom trees, a gift from Japan, are planted in Washington, D.C.

1933          Some 55,000 people stage a protest against Hitler in New York.

1941          Takeo Yoshikawa  arrives in Oahu, Hawaii, to begin spying for Japan on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor.

1942          The British raid the Nazi submarine base at St. Nazaire, France.

1944          Thousands of Jews are murdered in Kaunas, Lithuania. The Gestapo shoots forty Jewish policemen in the Riga, Latvia ghetto.

1944          One thousand Jews leave Drancy, France for the Auschwitz concentration camp.

1945          General Dwight Eisenhower  declares that the German defenses on the Western Front have been broken.

1952          Elements of the U.S. Eighth Army reach the 38th parallel in Korea, the original dividing line between the two Koreas.

1958          The United States announces a plan to explore space near the moon.

1976          Washington, D.C. opens its subway system.

1977          In aviation's worst disaster yet, 582 die when a KLM Pan Am 747 crashes.