Today is Sunday, Aug. 27, the 239th day of 2017. There are 126 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On August 27, 1967, Brian Epstein, manager of the Beatles, was found dead in his London flat from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills; he was 32.
On this date:
In 1776, the Battle of Long Island began during the Revolutionary War as British troops attacked American forces who ended up being forced to retreat two days later.
In 1883, the island volcano Krakatoa erupted with a series of cataclysmic explosions; the resulting tidal waves in Indonesia's Sunda Strait claimed some 36,000 lives in Java and Sumatra.
In 1892, fire seriously damaged New York's original Metropolitan Opera House.
In 1908, Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, was born near Stonewall, Texas.
In 1928, the Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed in Paris, outlawing war and providing for the peaceful settlement of disputes.
In 1939, the first turbojet-powered aircraft, the Heinkel He 178, went on its first full-fledged test flight over Germany.
In 1949, a violent white mob prevented an outdoor concert headlined by Paul Robeson from taking place near Peekskill, New York. (The concert was held eight days later.)
In 1957, the USS Swordfish, the second Skate Class nuclear submarine, was launched from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine.
In 1962, the United States launched the Mariner 2 space probe, which flew past Venus in December 1962.
In 1979, British war hero Lord Louis Mountbatten and three other people, including his 14-year-old grandson Nicholas, were killed off the coast of Ireland in a boat explosion claimed by the Irish Republican Army.
In 1989, the first U.S. commercial satellite rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida - a Delta booster carrying a British communications satellite, the Marcopolo 1.
In 2008, Barack Obama was nominated for president by the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
