Today in history—December 27

1703: England and Portugal sign the “Methuen Treaty,” which gives English textiles preference in Portugal and Portuguese wines preference in England. It stimulates the growth of the Oporto region of Portugal and the English infatuation with port wine.

1717: Lawyer Giovanni Angelo Braschi is born at Cesena, Italy. As Pope Pius VI he will see the conquest of Rome by Napoleon but, though captured and imprisoned until his death, will refuse to surrender his sovereignty.

1822: Louis Pasteur, the man who will revolutionize the world’s dairy industry by discovering “pasteurization,” is born in Dule, France.

1845: Dr. Crawford Long of Georgia delivers the first child while using anaesthesia. Long had previously conducted the first surgical operation under ether in 1839. Emory University’s Crawford Long Hospital is named for him.

1879: Perhaps film’s most famous black market overlord, Sydney Greenstreet (Signor Ferrari in Casablanca, at left with Paul Henreid and Ingrid Bergman) is born in Sandwich, Kent.  Greenstreet got his first film role, in The Maltese Falcon, at age 62.

1900: Carrie Nation launches her first attack on a saloon, using an axe to break all the bottles in the place.

1900: William George Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong, who exchanged a career in law for one in engineering and founded Britain’s Armstrong-Siddeley manufacturing empire, dies

1927: The Golden Age of Broadway Musicals begins at the Ziegfield Theater, as the Rogers and Hammerstein musical Show Boat opens on Broadway.

1932: New York’s Radio City Music Hall (left) opens with a spectacular six-hour show that loses a half-million dollars in six weeks.

1945: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, better known as the “World Bank” is created by 28 nations to stimulate growth and eliminate poverty in developing nations. Its first loan goes to France.

2001: The People’s Republic of China is given permanent normal trade status with the United States.