THE DAY IN HISTORY · DECEMBER 27
December 27 in history
What happened on December 27: 2 moments from the Maps of History atlases, in 1938 and 1979, each linked to the map that shows it.
— Vladivostok transit camp
27 Dec 1938 — In the transit camp at Vtoraya Rechka, where prisoners waited for ships to Kolyma, the poet Osip Mandelstam died, probably of typhus, weakened by hunger and cold, months after his second arrest and four years after a poem mocking Stalin first sent him into exile.
READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE SOVIET UNION UNDER STALIN MAP → · THE FULL STORY →
— Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
24–27 Dec 1979 — Soviet special forces kill the Afghan president in his palace as airborne divisions land in Kabul. The occupation will last nine years and hollow out the Soviet state.
READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE COLD WAR MAP → · THE FULL STORY →
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