Today in History: September 27, Taliban take power in Afghanistan

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Today is Saturday, Sept. 27, the 270th day of 2025. There are 95 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Sept. 27, 1996, the Taliban, the extremist Islamic movement in Afghanistan, drove the government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani out of Kabul, the capital, and executed former President Najibullah.

Also on this date:

In 1779, John Adams was named by Congress to negotiate the Revolutionary War’s peace terms with Britain.

In 1939, Warsaw, Poland, surrendered after weeks of resistance to invading forces from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II.

In 1940, Germany, Italy and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact, formally allying the World War II Axis powers.

In 1964, the government publicly released the report of the Warren Commission, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy.

In 1979, Congress gave its final approval to forming the U.S. Department of Education.

In 1991, President George H.W. Bush announced in a televised address that he was eliminating all U.S. ground-launched battlefield nuclear weapons and called on the Soviet Union to match the gesture.

In 2013, President Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani spoke by telephone, the first conversation between American and Iranian leaders in more than 30 years.

In 2018, Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that she was “100 percent” certain that she was sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh when they were teenagers, and Kavanaugh then told senators that he was “100 percent certain” he had done no such thing. Kavanaugh was confirmed on Oct. 6 of that year.

In 2021, R&B singer R. Kelly was convicted in a sex trafficking trial in New York after numerous allegations of misconduct with young women and children; a federal appeals court upheld the convictions and his 30-year prison sentence in 2025.

In 2023, NASA astronaut Frank Rubio sets a U.S. record of 371 days in space, returning to Earth from the International Space Station with Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin.

Today’s Birthdays: Musician Randy Bachman (Bachman-Turner Overdrive) is 82. Actor Liz Torres is 78. Baseball Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt is 76. Singer and actor Shaun Cassidy is 67. Comedian and podcaster Marc Maron is 62. Actor Gwyneth Paltrow is 53. Actor Indira Varma is 52. Musician-actor Carrie Brownstein is 51. Actor Anna Camp is 43. Rapper Lil Wayne is 43. Musician Avril Lavigne (AV’-rihl la-VEEN’) is 41. Actor Jenna Ortega is 23.