Historical timeline for May 27

Maryland Flood Event: A flood occurs throughout the Patapsco Valley, causing one death, destroying the entire first floors of buildings on Main Street in Ellicott City, and causing cars to overturn.

Andrew Scheer takes over after Rona Ambrose as the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Barack Obama is the first president of the United States to visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and meet Hibakusha.

The football club Kerala Blasters FC and its first supporters' group Manjappada are formed.

The 6.4 Mw Yogyakarta earthquake shakes central Java with an MSK intensity of VIII (Damaging), leaving more than 5,700 dead and 37,000 injured.

Members of Abu Sayyaf, an Islamist separatist group, seize twenty hostages from an affluent island resort on Palawan in the Philippines; the hostage crisis would not be resolved until June 2002.

Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on STS-96, the first shuttle mission to dock with the International Space Station.

Oklahoma City bombing: Michael Fortier is sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the terrorist plot.

The 1997 Central Texas tornado outbreak occurs, spawning multiple tornadoes in Central Texas, including the F5 that killed 27 in Jarrell.

First Chechen War: Russian president Boris Yeltsin meets with Chechen rebels for the first time and negotiates a cease-fire.

Somaliland War of Independence: The Somali National Movement launches a major offensive against Somali government forces in Hargeisa and Burao, then the second- and third-largest cities of Somalia.

The Danube–Black Sea Canal is opened, in a ceremony attended by the Ceaușescus. It had been under construction since the 1950s.

The Gwangju Massacre: Airborne and army troops of South Korea retake the city of Gwangju from civil militias, killing at least 207 and possibly many more.

A plane crash at José Martí International Airport in Havana, Cuba, kills 67.

Dibbles Bridge coach crash near Grassington, in North Yorkshire, England, kills 33, the highest ever death toll in a road accident in the United Kingdom.

Pakistani forces massacre over 200 civilians, mostly Bengali Hindus, in the Bagbati massacre.

The Dahlerau train disaster, the worst railway accident in West Germany, kills 46 people and injures 25 near Wuppertal.

Australians vote in favor of a constitutional referendum granting the Australian government the power to make laws to benefit Indigenous Australians and to count them in the national census.

The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy is launched by Jacqueline Kennedy and her daughter Caroline.

Vietnam War: American warships begin the first bombardment of National Liberation Front targets within South Vietnam.