Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 27
March 27: Feast day of Rupert of Salzburg in the Roman Catholic Church.
- 1513 – Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León (pictured) first sighted Florida, purportedly while searching for the Fountain of Youth in the New World.
- 1794 – To protect American merchant ships from Barbary pirates, the United States Congress passed the Naval Act to establish a naval force of six frigates, which eventually became the United States Navy.
- 1964 – The Good Friday Earthquake and subsequent tsunamis devastated Anchorage, Alaska, killing over 130 people.
- 1998 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Viagra for use as a treatment for erectile dysfunction, the first pill to be approved for this condition in the United States.
- 2002 – A suicide bomber killed about 30 Israeli civilians and injured about 140 others at the Park Hotel in Netanya, triggering Operation Defensive Shield, a large-scale counter-terrorist Israeli military incursion into the West Bank, two days later.