Reuters historical calendar - January 27

Jan 20 (Reuters) - Following are some of the major events to have occurred on January 27 in history:

1901 - Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer of operas including "Rigoletto", "La Traviata" and "Aida", died.

1926 - John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of television in London.

1944 - Russian General Leonid Govorov announced the complete lifting of the German siege of Leningrad during World War Two.

1945 - The Russians liberated Auschwitz concentration camp, where the Nazis had murdered 1.5 million men, women and children, including more than 1 million Jews.

1967 - Three U.S. astronauts died in a flash fire aboard Apollo 1 during a simulated launch at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

1973 - A ceasefire agreement signed in Paris ended the U.S. military role in Vietnam.

1991 - Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre fled after rebels overran his palace and captured the capital, Mogadishu.

1996 - The military seized power in Niger, ousting its first democratically elected president, Mahamane Ousmane.

2003 - Serbia's parliament adopted an accord to ditch the Yugoslav federation in favour of a loose union to be known as Serbia and Montenegro.

2005 - World leaders and survivors gathered in Poland for the 60th anniversary ceremony of the liberation of the Nazi death camp in Auschwitz.

2006 - Former German President Johannes Rau, a prominent figure in post-war German politics, died. He was 75.

2008 - Indonesia's former President Suharto, whose legacy of economic development was marred by graft and human rights abuses during his 32 years in power, died.

2009 - John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who chronicled the drama of small-town American life with flowing and vivid prose, wit and a frank eye for sex, died.

REUTERS