Today in History: January 27, Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps liberated by Soviet troops
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published 10:00 AM GMT+5, January 27, 2025
Today in history:
On Jan. 27, 1945, during World War II, Soviet troops liberated the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland.
Also on this date:
In 1756, composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria.
In 1880, Thomas Edison received a patent for his electric incandescent lamp.
In 1967, astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee died in a flash fire during a test aboard their Apollo spacecraft at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
In 1973, the Vietnam peace accords were signed in Paris, ending direct US involvement in the Vietnam War.
In 1984, singer Michael Jackson suffered serious burns to his scalp when pyrotechnics set his hair on fire during the filming of a Pepsi-Cola TV commercial at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.
In 2013, a fire started by pyrotechnics in the Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil killed 242 people and injured over 600.
In 2017, President Donald Trump barred all refugees from entering the United States for four months, declaring the ban necessary to prevent “radical Islamic terrorists” from entering the country.