What happened on 27 October?

14 events from the Ever-When timeline, ranked by how much they mattered.

1. 312 Conversion of Constantine Constantine's vision before Milvian Bridge marks his turn to Christianity; legalised by Edict of Milan; transforms the religion's status.
2. 1962 Vasily Arkhipov blocks a nuclear torpedo launch Hounded by US practice depth charges off the Cuba quarantine line, out of contact with Moscow and running out of air, the captain of Soviet submarine B-59 orders his nuclear torped
3. 1962 American U-2 shot down over Cuba At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a Soviet SAM crew in Cuba fires without Moscow's authorisation and kills U-2 pilot Major Rudolf Anderson — the crisis's only combat death
4. 1962 Robert Kennedy's secret Cuba–Turkey missile deal That evening RFK meets Soviet ambassador Dobrynin: the Soviet missiles must leave Cuba, a US no-invasion pledge stands — and America's Jupiter missiles will quietly leave Turkey wi
5. 1962 Khrushchev demands a Cuba–Turkey missile trade A second, harder Khrushchev letter — this one broadcast openly on Radio Moscow — raises the price for ending the Cuban Missile Crisis: the Soviet missiles leave Cuba only if Americ
6. 1962 Kennedy's 'Trollope ploy' reply to Khrushchev ExComm's answer to Khrushchev's two contradictory Cuban Missile Crisis letters: accept the first and ignore the second — like the Trollope heroine who treats a squeeze of the hand
7. 2005 2005 French riots Three weeks of riots in immigrant suburbs after two teenagers die fleeing police.
8. 2002 Lula elected President of Brazil Former union leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wins Brazil's presidency, emblem of Latin America's leftward 'pink tide'.
9. 1986 Big Bang (City of London) Sudden deregulation of the City's stock market in 1986 reshapes London finance.
10. 1666 Hubert hanged on a false confession A French watchmaker, Robert Hubert, confesses — falsely, impossibly, and probably out of derangement — to starting the fire, and is hanged at Tyburn while the mob looks for Catholi
11. 1962 Castro urges a Soviet nuclear first strike Convinced an American invasion of Cuba is hours away, Fidel Castro spends the night in the Soviet embassy in Havana dictating a cable urging Khrushchev to launch a nuclear strike i
12. 1967 Abortion Act 1967 Legalises abortion in Great Britain up to 28 weeks (later 24); landmark of liberal social reform.
13. 2022 Elon Musk buys Twitter Musk takes over the platform for $44bn, rebrands it X, and remakes one of the world's town squares.
14. 1553 Execution of Michael Servetus Spanish physician and anti-Trinitarian theologian Michael Servetus is burned at the stake in Calvin's Geneva — the Reformation's most notorious act of intolerance, and a spur to la