September 27, 1940

1940Josephine Barstow, English soprano and actress^[†]

Dame Josephine Clare Barstow, is an English operatic soprano.

1940Benoni Beheyt, Belgian cyclist^[†]

Benoni Beheyt is a Belgian former professional road bicycle racer who raced from 1962 to 1968. Beheyt won 22 races and is most famous for winning the 1963 World Cycling Championships Road Race and stage win of the 1964 Tour de France. He also competed in the individual road race and team time trial events at the 1960 Summer Olympics.

1940Walter Benjamin, German philosopher and critic (born 1892)^[†]

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western Marxism, and post-Kantianism, he made contributions to the philosophy of history, metaphysics, historical materialism, criticism, aesthetics and had an oblique but overwhelmingly influential impact on the resurrection of the Kabbalah by virtue of his life-long epistolary relationship with Gershom Scholem.

1940Julius Wagner-Jauregg, Austrian physician and neuroscientist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1857)^[†]

Julius Wagner-Jauregg was an Austrian physician, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1927, and is the first psychiatrist to have done so. His Nobel award was "for his discovery of the therapeutic value of malaria inoculation in the treatment of dementia paralytica".

1940World War II: The Tripartite Pact is signed in Berlin by Germany, Japan and Italy.^[†]

World War II or the Second World War was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilising all resources in pursuit of total war. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the first and only nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II is the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 70 to 85 million people, more than half of whom were civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.