February 27th

National Day

• National Pokemon Day
• The Big Breakfast Day
• Retro Day

Birthdays

• 1957 – Adrian Smith, English guitarist and singer with Iron Maiden (“Run to the Hills”, The Trooper”, The Number of the Beast”), born in the London Borough of Hackney, London.
• 1957 – Timothy Spall, English actor (Auf Wiedersehen Pet, The King’s Speech, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Mr. Turner), born in Battersea, London.
• 1960 – Paul Humphreys, English singer, songwriter and musician with Orchestral Manoeuvres in theDark (“Enola Gay”), born in London.
• 1971 – Derren Brown, English mentalist, illusionist, and writer (“Derren Brown: Trick of the Mind”), born in Purley, Croyden, London.
• 1973 – Peter Andre, English-Australian singer (“Mysterious Girl”, Flava”) and television personality,born in Harrow, London.

On This Day

• 2014 – An ‘unreserved apology’ was issued by the government to the family of 47 year old Sheila Holt from Rochdale who was sent a letter encouraging her to find work, even though she had been in a coma for two months. She was sectioned under the Mental Health Act in December after struggling to cope with the government’s controversial new back-to-work scheme and had a heart attack on 17th December.
• 2023 – The legal age of marriage in England and Wales was raised to 18 to protect the damaging impact of forced marriages. 16 and 17 year olds will no longer be allowed to marry or enter a civil partnership, even if they have parental consent.

Music

• 1964 – The Rolling Stones made their second appearance on BBC TV show Top Of The Pops performing their latest single ‘Not Fade Away’.
• 1993 – After 14 weeks at No.1 on the US singles chart, ‘I Will Always Love You’, gave Whitney Houston the longest ever US chart topper, taking over from Boyz II Men’s hit ‘End Of The Road’, and became the second biggest selling single in the US. Recorded by Houston for the soundtrack to her film debut, The Bodyguard, the song quickly became one of the world’s Best Selling Singles of all time.
• 2019 – American singer Ariana Grande was at No.1 on the UK charts with her fifth studio album Thank U, Next. The album was preceded by two singles; the title track and ‘7 Rings’, both of which debuted atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart, becoming Grande’s first two No.1 songs in the US.

History

• 1560 – The Treaty of Berwick is signed by England and the Lords of the Congregation of Scotland,
• establishing the terms under which English armed forces were to be permitted in Scotland in order to expel occupying French troops.
• 1700 – English explorer and Pirate, William Dampier is the 1st British person to visit the Pacific Island of New Britain, which he named. He was also the first Englishman to chart part of the Australian coastline, and the first European to undertake a scientific study of its landscape, seas, plants and animals.
• 1812 – Poet Lord Byron gives his first address as a member of the House of Lords, in defense of Luddite violence against Industrialism in his home county of Nottinghamshire.
• 1868 – Benjamin Disraeli became Prime Minister of Britain.
• 1900 – Second Boer War: In South Africa, British military leaders receive an unconditional notice ofsurrender from Boer General Piet Cronjé at the Battle of Paardeberg.
• 1900 – The British Labour Party was founded having grown out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the 19th century. It overtook the Liberal Party to become the main opposition to the Conservative Party in the early 1920s, forming two minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in the 1920s and early 1930s.