Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 February 27

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José de Urrea

The Battle of San Patricio was fought on February 27, 1836, between Mexican troops and Texians, rebellious settlers in the Mexican province of Texas. The battle marked the start of the Goliad Campaign, the Mexican offensive to retake the Texas Gulf Coast. By the end of 1835, all Mexican troops had been driven from Texas. Frank W. Johnson, the commander of the volunteer army in Texas, gathered volunteers for a planned invasion of the Mexican port town of Matamoros. After spending several weeks gathering horses, in late February Johnson and about 40 men led the herd to San Patricio. He assigned some of his troops to a ranch outside town to guard the horses. Unbeknownst to the Texians, on February 18 Mexican General José de Urrea (pictured) had led a large contingent of troops from Matamoros into Texas. Urrea's men easily followed the trail left by the horses, and surprised the sleeping Texians in San Patricio. After a fifteen-minute battle, all but six Texians had been killed or imprisoned. (Full article...)

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India conducts an air strike against suspected militants in Balakot, Pakistan.
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Pope Francis concludes a summit in Vatican City that discussed sexual abuse by Catholic Church clergy.
Scientists synthesize hachimoji DNA using four new nucleobases in addition to the four in natural DNA.

On this day

February 27

The Reichstag on fire

1560 – The Treaty of Berwick was signed, setting the terms under which an English fleet and army could enter Scotland to expel French troops defending the Regency of Mary of Guise.
1870 – The current flag of Japan was first adopted as the national flag for Japanese merchant ships.
1933 – The Reichstag building in Berlin, the assembly location of the German Parliament, was set on fire (pictured), a pivotal event in the establishment of the Nazi regime in Germany.
1989 – A wave of protests, riots and looting known as the Caracazo resulted in a death toll of between 276 and 2,000 people in the Venezuelan capital Caracas and its surrounding towns.
2015 – Russian statesman and politician Boris Nemtsov, an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, was assassinated in central Moscow.

William Alabaster (b. 1567) · Alice Hamilton (b. 1869) · Ganesh Vasudev Mavalankar (d. 1956)

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Hou Yifan (Chinese: 侯逸凡; pinyin: Hóu Yìfán; born 27 February 1994) is a Chinese chess grandmaster and four-time Women's World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, she is the youngest female player ever to qualify for the title of grandmaster and the youngest ever to win the Women's World Chess Championship.

Photograph: Andreas Kontokanis

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