December 27, Charles Darwin sets out on world voyage

Today is Saturday, Dec. 27, the 361st day of 2025. There are four days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Dec. 27, 1831, naturalist Charles Darwin set out on a round-the-world voyage from Plymouth, England, aboard the HMS Beagle.

Also on this date:

In 1904, James Barrie’s play “Peter Pan: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up” opened at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London.

In 1932, New York City’s Radio City Music Hall opened to the public.

In 1945, the International Monetary Fund was formally established as its first 29 member countries ratified its Articles of Agreement; the IMF began operations in 1947.

In 1968, the Apollo 8 capsule splashed down safely in the Pacific, completing the first crewed mission to orbit the moon.

In 1979, Soviet forces seized control of Afghanistan. President Hafizullah Amin (hah-FEE’-zoo-lah ah-MEEN’) was overthrown and executed and was replaced by Babrak Karmal.

In 1985, American naturalist and conservationist Dian Fossey, 53, who had studied mountain gorillas in Africa for nearly 20 years, was found murdered in her cabin in Rwanda. No one was arrested for the crime.

In 2007, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in a shooting and bomb attack that killed at least 20 people in the city of Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

In 2022, Adam Fox, co-leader of a plot to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, was sentenced to 16 years in prison after being convicted of conspiracy charges. Barry Croft Jr. would be sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison in the plot.

In 2022, state and military police were sent to keep people off Buffalo’s snow-choked roads after western New York’s deadliest storm in at least two generations; more than 30 people were reported to have died in the region.