October 27 is a day remembered for a number of reasons throughout history: It is the 300th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; famous people were born on this day (Niccolò Paganini, in 1782 and Theodore Roosevelt, in 1858) and some died on this day (Prince Ivan the Great, 1505 and Lou Reed, 2014); in 1682 Philadelphia was supposedly founded on this day; in 1954 Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. became the first African-American general in the United States Air Force; in 1982 Prince's album "1999" was released while China announced its population to be more than 1 billion people; total lunar eclipses took place on this day in 1920 and 2004.

Discover more about this day in science, industry and business history as can be found in our collection:

• 1553: Condemned as a heretic, Michael Servetus is burned at the stake just outside Geneva. He was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and Renaissance humanist. He was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation, as discussed in Christianismi Restitutio (1553). He was a polymath versed in many sciences: mathematics, astronomy and meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine and pharmacology.
• 1811: Isaac Merrit Singer is born, an American inventor, actor, and entrepreneur who developed the Singer sewing machine and patented it in 1851. Many people had patented sewing machines before Singer, but his success was based on the practicality of his machine, the ease with which it could be adapted to home use, and its availability on an installment payment basis. His machine was also used in manufacturing to produce clothing, collars, gloves, hats, shoes, etc. Singer Sewing Machine Company manufactured 2,564 machines in 1856, and 13,000 in 1860 at a new plant on Mott Street in New York. Later, a massive plant was built near Elizabeth, New Jersey.

• 1873: Joseph Glidden submits an application to the U.S. Patent Office for his clever new design for a fencing wire with sharp barbs, an invention that will forever change the face of the American West. Glidden’s was not the first barbed wire. His design, for which he did get a patent, significantly improved on previous ones by using two strands of wire twisted together to hold the barbed spur wires firmly in place. Glidden’s wire also soon proved to be well suited to mass production techniques, and by 1880 more than 80 million pounds of inexpensive Glidden-style barbed wire was sold, making it the most popular wire in the nation. 
• 1874: "Every farmer who has trudged after a plow under a hot sun has doubtless wished for just some such an invention as that illustrated in the annexed engraving. It is simply an attachment readily applied to any convenient portion of the plow, the object of which is to support an umbrella and to allow of the same being adjusted so as always to throw its shade upon the plowman…This invention was patented through the Scientific American Patent Agency, October 27, 1874, to Jefferson G. Darby, of Fort Motte, S.C." Can you find this patent in the United States Patent and Trademark Office database?

• 1878: The Manhattan Savings Bank located at the corner of Bleecker Street and Broadway in New York City was robbed in what was hailed by The New York Times as “the most sensational in the history of bank robberies in this country.” Several masked men stormed the bank and held a janitor and his family, who lived in the building, captive. Holding his wife and mother-in-law at gunpoint, the men forced the janitor to open the outer door of the bank vault. Then they worked on the inner vault door and eventually were able to gain access using their safe-cracking tools. The robbers quietly left the bank through the back door taking with them securities and money valued at $2,757,700.
• 1904: The New York subway system officially opens. It was the first rapid-transit subway system in America. 

• 1925: American photographer and inventor Fred Waller receives patent no. 1,559,390 for water skis, at that time referred to as aquaplane. 
• 1927: The first newsreel featuring sound is released in New York. 
• 1938: Du Pont announces "nylon" as the new name for its new synthetic yarn. 
• 1961: NASA tests the first Saturn I rocket in Mission Saturn-Apollo 1. The Saturn I booster was a huge increase in size and power over anything previously launched. It was three times taller, required six times more fuel and produced ten times more thrust than the Jupiter-C rocket that had launched the first American satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit in 1958. Unfortunately the Apollo 1 program (the first manned mission of the Apollo program) never made its target launch date. A cabin fire during a launch rehearsal in 1967 killed all three crew members.
• 1980: In its October 27 issue, Business Week argues that every corporation has a corporate culture –that is, values that set a pattern for its employee’s activities, opinions and actions and that are instilled in succeeding generations of employees. While awareness of corporate or organizational culture in businesses and other organizations such as universities emerged in the 1960s, the term “corporate culture” was developed in the early 1980s and widely known by the 1990s.
• 1986: The British government suddenly deregulates financial markets, leading to a total restructuring of the way in which they operate in the country, an event now referred to as the Big Bang.
• 1994: Gliese 229B is the first Substellar Mass Object to be unquestionably identified. 
• 1997: The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops 554.26 points to 7,161.15. The stock market was shut down for the first time since the 1981 assassination attempt on U.S. President Roland Reagan. Stock markets around the world crash because of fears of a global economic meltdown.
• 2003: Bank of America Corp. announces it agreed to buy FleetBoston Financial Corp. The deal created the second largest banking company in the U.S.