What happened on September 27
All 5 specimens from this file, spanning 1590 to 1964, with the story behind each photograph.
Reveal the full answer key
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A scholar announces that he can read Egyptian hieroglyphs
Jean-Francois Champollion read his letter to the French Academy on 27 September 1822, setting out how hieroglyphs worked: partly pictures, partly sounds. He had the Rosetta Stone's Greek text as his key. He is said to have walked into his brother's office, said "I've got it", and fainted.
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A car goes on sale that an ordinary worker can afford
The first Model T left the factory on 27 September 1908 at $850. Moving assembly lines pushed the price under $300 within fifteen years, and about fifteen million were built. Ford eventually paid his own workers enough that they could buy one.
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The first of a fleet of 2,700 emergency cargo ships is launched
The SS Patrick Henry went down the slipway in Baltimore on 27 September 1941, the first of 2,710 Liberty ships. They were welded rather than riveted, deliberately plain, and built in yards that had never made a ship before. Roosevelt called them ugly ducklings; they carried most of the war's cargo.
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A commission publishes its report on a president's assassination
The Warren Commission handed its report to Lyndon Johnson three days earlier and released it publicly on 27 September 1964, concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. It ran to 888 pages with 26 volumes of evidence behind it, and settled almost nothing: polls have consistently found most Americans do not accept it.
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A pope dies twelve days after his election, before he is even crowned
Urban VII was elected on 15 September 1590 and died of malaria on 27 September, the shortest papacy on record. In those twelve days he issued the first known public smoking ban, forbidding tobacco anywhere near a church. He left his fortune as dowries for poor girls in Rome.