| 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. |
| 1893 | | The American Bell Telephone Company makes the first long distance telephone call to its branch office in 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 | | Tokeo 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 | | One thousand Jews leave Drancy, France for the Auschwitz concentration camp. |
| 1944 | | Thousands of Jews are murdered in Kaunas, Lithuania. The Gestapo shoots forty Jewish policemen in the Riga, Latvia ghetto. |
| 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. |
Born on March 27 |
| 1785 | | Louis XVII, pretender to the throne during the French Revolution. |
| 1809 | | Georges-Eugene Haussmann, French town planner, designed modern-day Paris. |
| 1813 | | Nathaniel Currier, lithographer for Currier and Ives. |
| 1845 | | Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, German physicist, accidentally discovered X-rays. |
| 1863 | | Sir Henry Royce, cofounder the Rolls-Royce automotive company. |
| 1879 | | Edward Steichen, pioneer of American photography. |
| 1906 | | Pee Wee Russell, jazz clarinetist. |
| 1910 | | John Robinson Pierce, the father of comunications satellites. |
| 1914 | | Budd Schulberg, journalist, novelist and screenwriter (What Makes Sammy Run). |
| 1923 | | Louis Simpson, Pultizer Prize-winning poet. |
| 1924 | | Sarah Vaughan, jazz singer. |
