This Day in History: Dec. 27

On this day, Dec. 27 ...

2001: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announces that Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners would be held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Also on this day:

• 1831: Naturalist Charles Darwin sets out on a round-the-world voyage aboard the HMS Beagle.
• 1904: James Barrie’s play "Peter Pan: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up" opens at the Duke of York’s Theater in London.
• 1945: The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are formally established.
• 1947: The original version of the puppet character Howdy Doody makes his TV debut on NBC’s "Puppet Playhouse."
• 1949: Queen Juliana of the Netherlands signs an act recognizing Indonesia’s sovereignty after more than three centuries of Dutch rule.
• 1968: Apollo 8 and its three astronauts make a safe, nighttime splashdown in the Pacific.
• 1970: The musical "Hello, Dolly!" closes on Broadway after a run of 2,844 performances.

Rebel Muslim fighters inspect a Soviet tank captured in fighting with the Kabul government forces on September near Asmar, Afghanistan on Thursday, Dec. 27, 1979. The Kabul government of Hafizaullah Amin was overthrown by former Deputy Prime Minister Babrak Karmal. (AP Photo/Steve McCurry)

• 1979: Soviet forces seize control of Afghanistan. President Hafizullah Amin is overthrown and executed and replaced by Babrak Karmal.
• 1981: "Stardust" composer and bandleader Hoagy Carmichael dies in Rancho Mirage, Calif., at age 82.
• 2002: A defiant North Korea orders U.N. nuclear inspectors to leave the country and says it will restart a laboratory capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons; the U.N. nuclear watchdog says its inspectors are "staying put" for the time being.
• 2013: Connecticut police release thousands of pages from their investigation into the Newtown massacre, providing the most detailed and disturbing picture yet of the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 20 first-graders and six educators dead.
• 2017: Freezing temperatures and below-zero wind chills socked much of the northern United States.