Today in History: May 27, 2004, page 1

1647 - The first recorded American execution of a ''witch'' took place in Massachusetts.
1896 - A tornado struck St. Louis and East St. Louis, Ill., killing 255 people.
1935 - The Supreme Court struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act.
1941 - The German battleship Bismarck sank off France, with a loss of 2,300 lives.
1963 - The album ''The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan,'' which featured the song ''Blowin' in the Wind,'' was released.
1964 - Independent India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, died.
1994 - Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia after spending two decades in exile.
1995 - Actor Christopher Reeve was paralyzed when he was thrown from his horse during a jumping event in Charlottesville, Va.
1996 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin negotiated a cease-fire to the war in Chechnya in his first meeting with the rebels' leader.
1997 - The Supreme Court ruled Paula Jones could pursue her sex harassment lawsuit against President Clinton while he was in office.
1998 - Michael Fortier, the government's star witness in the Oklahoma City bombing case, was sentenced to 12 years in prison after apologizing for not warning anyone about the deadly plot.
1999 - A U.N. tribunal indicted Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against humanity, holding the Yugoslav president personally responsible for the horrors in Kosovo.