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Explore 27 September

Explore 27 September: the first steam-hauled public railway opens, the Jesuits are approved, Mexico’s independence is won and Champollion cracks the hieroglyphs. Meet Louis XIII, Grazia Deledda and Samuel Adams, born on this date.

This day through time →10 verified events across 4 eras

⌛10Full
Timeline ◈4Historic
Moments ♙7Born
Today ✦5Lives
Remembered ◉3Firsts &
Discoveries ☉1Observances
A replica of Locomotion No. 1 passes the Shildon coal drops during the Rail 150 celebrations in 1975.
A replica of Locomotion No. 1 passes the Shildon coal drops during the Rail 150 celebrations in 1975.
Image creditMurgatroyd49 · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
1825

The first steam-hauled public railway opens

On 27 September 1825 the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened in north-east England. Large crowds watched George Stephenson drive Locomotion, built for the line by Robert Stephenson and Co., at the head of a train of wagons from the Shildon area through Darlington to Stockton.

It was the first public railway in the world to use steam locomotives, built to carry coal from the collieries of south-west Durham to the River Tees. The engine had been delivered by road from Newcastle only days before the opening.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Stockton and Darlington Railway ↗
Ignatius of Loyola receives the bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae from Pope Paul III, in an 18th-century fresco by Johann Christoph Handke in Olomouc.
Ignatius of Loyola receives the bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae from Pope Paul III, in an 18th-century fresco by Johann Christoph Handke in Olomouc.
Image creditJohann Christoph Handke / Michal Maňas · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1540

The Pope approves the Society of Jesus

On 27 September 1540 Pope Paul III issued the bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae, formally recognising the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, as a religious order. The bull took in the ‘Formula of the Institute’, the charter written by Ignatius of Loyola and his first companions in 1539, which the pope had approved by word of mouth a year earlier.

At first the bull limited the order to sixty members, a restriction lifted after two years. The Jesuits went on to become one of the largest orders of the Catholic Church, known above all for their schools, universities and missions.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: The Society of Jesus: On 27 September 1540 the Society of Jesus received papal approval ↗
The generals of the Army of the Three Guarantees, in a 19th-century print.
The generals of the Army of the Three Guarantees, in a 19th-century print.
Image creditFerdinand Bastin, Julio Michauld and Thomas · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1821

The Army of the Three Guarantees enters Mexico City

On 27 September 1821 Agustín de Iturbide rode into Mexico City at the head of the Army of the Three Guarantees, completing Mexico’s independence from Spain after more than a decade of war. Iturbide, once a royalist officer, had joined forces with the insurgent leader Vicente Guerrero and proclaimed the Plan of Iguala on 24 February 1821.

The army’s three guarantees were the Catholic religion, independence, and union between the country’s rival groups. In 1822 Iturbide was proclaimed emperor of Mexico.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Army of the Three Guarantees ↗
The signing ceremony of the Tripartite Pact in Berlin, 27 September 1940.
The signing ceremony of the Tripartite Pact in Berlin, 27 September 1940.
Image creditHeinrich Hoffmann · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1940

Germany, Italy and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact

On 27 September 1940, a year into the Second World War, Germany, Italy and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact in Berlin. It was signed by the foreign ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Galeazzo Ciano and by Japan’s ambassador, Kurusu Saburo, and was to last ten years.

The three powers promised to help one another if any of them was attacked by a power not yet involved in the European war or the war in China. That wording left out the Soviet Union and was aimed chiefly at deterring the United States. Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria and others later joined.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Tripartite Pact ↗
♙
PEOPLE

Born Today

Louis XIII of France
Image creditPhilippe de Champaigne · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1601

Louis XIII of France

King of France from 1610 to 1643, whose chief minister Cardinal Richelieu strengthened royal power.

Samuel Adams
Image creditJohn Singleton Copley · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1722

Samuel Adams

Boston politician and organiser of resistance to British rule, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and later governor of Massachusetts.

Grazia Deledda
Image creditNobel Foundation · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1871

Grazia Deledda

Sardinian novelist who won the 1926 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Meat Loaf
Image creditRonden Talent Management · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1947

Meat Loaf

American singer and actor whose album Bat Out of Hell became one of the best-selling records of all time.

Francesco Totti
Image creditАнтон Зайцев · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1976

Francesco Totti

Italian footballer who spent his whole career at AS Roma and won the 2006 World Cup.

Avril Lavigne
Image creditRaph_PH · CC BY 2.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1984

Avril Lavigne

Canadian singer-songwriter who found fame as a teenager with the album Let Go.

◉
IDEAS THAT CHANGED THINGS

Firsts, Science & Discoveries

Jean-François Champollion, painted by Léon Cogniet.
Jean-François Champollion, painted by Léon Cogniet.
Image creditLéon Cogniet · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1822

Champollion announces how to read hieroglyphs

On Friday 27 September 1822 Jean-François Champollion’s ‘Lettre à M. Dacier’ was read before the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in Paris. In it he explained how Egyptian hieroglyphs could be read, a moment the British Museum describes as the birth of Egyptology.

Working from the Rosetta Stone and other inscriptions, and from his knowledge of Coptic, Champollion showed that hieroglyphs were used phonetically to spell foreign royal names such as Ptolemy and Berenice. Only a fortnight earlier, the story goes, he had burst into his brother’s room crying ‘I’ve got it!’

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: British Museum: Eureka! Finding the key to ancient Egypt ↗
Albert Einstein in about 1904, during his years at the patent office in Bern.
Albert Einstein in about 1904, during his years at the patent office in Bern.
Image creditLucien Chavan [1] (1868 - 1942), a friend of Einstein's when he was living in Berne. · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1905

Einstein’s E = mc² paper reaches the journal

On 27 September 1905 the journal Annalen der Physik received a three-page paper by Albert Einstein, then a clerk at the Swiss patent office, titled ‘Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content?’. It was the last of the four great papers of his ‘miracle year’.

Einstein concluded that when a body gives off energy as radiation its mass falls accordingly: the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content. The relationship, later written E = mc², became the most famous equation in physics.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Physics Today (American Institute of Physics): E = mc² ↗
The Dawn mission emblem, showing the spacecraft between Vesta and Ceres.
The Dawn mission emblem, showing the spacecraft between Vesta and Ceres.
Image creditNASA · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
2007

NASA’s Dawn sets off for the asteroid belt

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft was launched on 27 September 2007 on a mission to the two largest bodies in the asteroid belt. Driven by ion engines burning xenon, it reached the giant asteroid Vesta in July 2011 and orbited it for over a year before moving on.

In March 2015 Dawn arrived at Ceres, becoming the first spacecraft to visit a dwarf planet and the only one to have orbited two separate bodies beyond the Earth-Moon system. Its mission ended on 1 November 2018 when it ran out of fuel.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: NASA: 15 years ago, Dawn begins voyage to asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres ↗
✦
LIVES REMEMBERED

Remembered Today

Edgar Degas
Image creditEdgar Degas · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1917

Edgar Degas

French painter and sculptor, famous for his ballet dancers, racecourses and café scenes.

Engelbert Humperdinck
Image creditUnknown photographer · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1921

Engelbert Humperdinck

German composer of the fairy-tale opera Hansel and Gretel.

Julius Wagner-Jauregg
Image creditUnknown authorUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1940

Julius Wagner-Jauregg

Austrian physician who won the 1927 Nobel Prize for treating late-stage syphilis with induced malaria fever.

☉
AROUND THE WORLD

Observances & Anniversaries

A replica of Locomotion No. 1 at Shildon.
A replica of Locomotion No. 1 at Shildon.
Image creditMurgatroyd49 · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
Annual

World Tourism Day

The United Nations’ tourism agency has marked World Tourism Day on 27 September every year since 1980. The date recalls the adoption of the agency’s statutes on 27 September 1970, which led to its founding five years later.

Source: United Nations: World Tourism Day, background ↗
HISTORY & TIMELINE

Finished the highlights?

Follow 27 September chronologically, from the Middle Ages to the modern day, with 10 verified events and the sources behind them.

This day through time →
Sources & further reading