Today in History - December 27 | Pope's surprising gift for would-be assassin
On December 27, 1983, Pope John Paul II visited a man in an Italian prison to offer him forgiveness.
More than two years earlier, that man had done his very best to kill the pontiff.
Scientist Charles Darwin embarked on his landmark voyage on the HMS Beagle on December 27, 1831.
It was from this voyage that Darwin, then aged 22, first formulated his theory of evolution.
But that wasn't his original goal.
(The HMS Beagle at Tierra Del Fuego, as painted by on-board draughtsman Conrad Martens.)
Darwin joined the expedition, which ventured down past South America, then to Tahiti and Australia in its circumnavigation of the globe, as a geologist.
But his discovery of fossilised bones of extinct animals, and his observations of plants and animals, made him question the then-prevalent belief that species were fixed.
The result was Darwin's theory of evolution, and his landmark book On the Origin of Species, first published years later in 1859.
Bhutto's body was entombed in her family mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Baksh, Pakistan.
Her death spurred the Pakistan Peoples' Party to electoral wins the next year.
While the government initially blamed al-Quaeda as a chief suspect in the attack, two senior police officers were later jailed, one for mishandling security and the other for damaging evidence.
Pervez Musharraf, who was president of Pakistan when Bhutto was killed, was later charged with high treason and sentenced to death in absentia, due to what a court said was his failure to provide Bhutto with sufficient security despite her requests.
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