Today is Friday, Aug. 27, the 239th day of 2021.
There are 126 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On August 27, 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.
On this date:
In 1859, Edwin L. Drake drilled the first successful oil well in the United States, at Titusville, Pa.
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 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 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson accepted his party’s nomination for a term in his own right, telling the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, “Let us join together in giving every American the fullest life which he can hope for.”
In 1967, Brian Epstein, manager of the Beatles, was found dead in his London flat from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills; he was 32.
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 1998, two suspects in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya were brought to the United States to face charges. (Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-‘Owhali (moh-HAH’-mehd rah-SHEED’ dah-ood ahl-oh-WAHL’-ee) and Mohammed Saddiq Odeh (sah-DEEK’ oh-DAY’) were convicted in 2001 of conspiring to carry out the bombing; both were sentenced to life in prison.)
In 2001, Israeli helicopters fired a pair of rockets through office windows and killed senior PLO leader Mustafa Zibri.
In 2005, coastal residents jammed freeways and gas stations as they rushed to get out of the way of Hurricane Katrina, which was headed toward New Orleans.
In 2006, a Comair CRJ-100 crashed after trying to take off from the wrong runway in Lexington, Ky., killing 49 people and leaving the co-pilot the sole survivor.
In 2008, Barack Obama was nominated for president by the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
In 2009, mourners filed past the closed casket of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. Jaycee Lee Dugard, kidnapped when she was 11, was reunited with her mother 18 years after her abduction in South Lake Tahoe, California.
