Today in history

January 27

1951
The first atomic test was conducted at the Nevada Proving Ground as an Air Force plane dropped a one-kiloton bomb on Frenchman Flats.

The Proving Ground was created by President Harry Truman on January 11, 1951. The final nuclear test, Divider, was conducted on September 23, 1992. There were 99 above ground tests and over 800 below ground tests there.

1969
In Detroit, African-American auto workers known as the Eldon Avenue Axle Plant Revolutionary Union Movement led a wildcat strike against racism and bad working conditions at Chrysler. Since the 1967 Detroit riots, African American workers had organized militant groups in several Detroit auto plants criticizing both the auto companies and the UAW leadership. These groups combined Black-Power nationalism and workplace militancy and shut auto plants in more than a dozen inner city plants. The most well known of these was the Dodge Revolutionary Union movement, or DRUM.
Most inner-city UAW locals soon became headed by African Americans, some of them veterans of this movement.

Detroit: I Do Mind Dying A Study in Urban Revolution

1973
The United States and North Vietnam signed “An Agreement Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam” in Paris and all U.S. troops were to leave Vietnam within 90 days. The United States, South Vietnam, Viet Cong, and North Vietnam formally sign but because South Vietnam was unwilling to recognize the Viet Cong’s Provisional Revolutionary Government, all references to it were confined to the document signed by North Vietnam and the United States. The same day, the United States announced an end to the military draft.
The Vietnam War resulted in between three and four million Vietnamese deaths with a countless number of Vietnamese casualties. It cost the United States 58,000 lives and 350,000 casualties. The financial cost to the United States came to something over $150 billion dollars.

Henry A. Kissinger and Le Duc Thos initial the agreement

1983
Nationwide strike by some 10,000 conscientious objectors, West Germany.

1988
The Center for Constitutional Rights revealed that the FBI had spied on a number of organizations critical of the Reagan administration policies in Central America. The principal target was the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). 100 other groups were also investigated, including the Roman Catholic Maryknoll Sisters, the United Auto Workers, the United Steel Workers, and the National Education Association. FBI director William Sessions said the investigations were an outgrowth of the belief that CISPES was aiding a “terrorist organization.”

CISPIS demo May, 1981–Wash DC

1996
France conducted an open-air nuclear test in the South Pacific.