This Day in History

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August 27

1776 – Battle of Long Island: In what is now Brooklyn, New York, British forces under General William Howe defeat Americans under General George Washington.

1832 – Black Hawk, leader of the Sauk tribe of Native Americans, surrenders to U.S. authorities, ending the Black Hawk War.

1859 – Edwin Drake successfully drilled for oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania, resulting in the Pennsylvania oil rush, the first oil boom in the United States.

1881 – The Georgia hurricane makes landfall near Savannah, Georgia, resulting in an estimated 700 deaths.

1883 – Eruption of Krakatoa: Four enormous explosions destroy the island of Krakatoa and cause years of climate change.

1893 – The Sea Islands hurricane strikes the United States near Savannah, Georgia, killing an estimated 1,000-2,000 people.

1896 – Anglo-Zanzibar War: The shortest war in world history (09:00 to 09:45), between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar.

1918 – Mexican Revolution: Battle of Ambos Nogales: U.S. Army forces skirmish against Mexican Carrancistas and their German advisors on the Mexican-American border in Arizona, in the only battle of World War I fought on American soil.

1939 – First flight of the turbojet-powered Heinkel He 178, the world's first jet aircraft.

1942 – First day of the Sarny Massacre.

1962 – The Mariner 2 unmanned space mission is launched to Venus by NASA.

1967 - British music entrepreneur and the manager of The Beatles, Brian Epstein was found dead, locked in a bedroom at his London home. A coroner's inquest concluded that Epstein died from an overdose of the sleeping pill Carbitrol.

1979 – A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb kills British retired admiral Lord Mountbatten and three others while they are boating on holiday in Sligo, Republic of Ireland. Shortly after, 18 British Army soldiers are killed in an ambush near Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland.

1980 – A massive bomb planted by extortionist John Birges explodes at Harvey's Resort Hotel in Stateline, Nevada after a failed disarming attempt by the FBI. Although the hotel is damaged, no one is injured.

1990 - Stevie Ray Vaughan was killed when the helicopter he was flying in, hit a man-made ski slope while trying to navigate through dense fog. Vaughan had played a show at Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, Wisconsin with Robert Cray & His Memphis Horns, and Eric Clapton. Vaughan was informed by a member of Clapton's crew that three seats were open on a helicopter returning to Chicago with Clapton's crew, it turned out there was only one seat left; Vaughan requested it from his older brother, Jimmie, who obliged. Three members of Eric Clapton's entourage were also killed.

1992 - John Lennon's handwritten lyrics to The Beatles song 'A Day In The Life' from Sgt. Pepper sold in an auction at Sotheby's London for $100,000 (£56,600). The lyrics were put up for sale again in March 2006 by Bonhams in New York. Sealed bids were opened on 7 March 2006 and offers started at about $2 million. The lyric sheet was auctioned again by Sotheby's in June 2010 when it was purchased by an anonymous American buyer who paid $1,200,000 (£810,000).

2003 – Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years, passing 34,646,418 miles (55,758,005 km) distant.

2006 – Comair Flight 5191 crashes on takeoff from Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky bound for Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta. Of the passengers and crew, 49 of 50 are confirmed dead.

2011 – Hurricane Irene strikes the United States east coast, killing 47 and causing an estimated $15.6 billion in damage.

Births

1809 – Hannibal Hamlin (15th VPOTUS); 1865 – Charles G. Dawes (30th VPOTUS); 1874 – Carl Bosch (Haber–Bosch process, "On average, one-half of the nitrogen in a human body comes from synthetically fixed sources, the product of a Haber–Bosch plant."); 1877 – Charles Rolls (yeah, that Rolls); 1890 – Man Ray; 1896 – Léon Theremin (invented the Theremin); 1899 – C. S. Forester (wrote The African Queen, Horatio Hornblower series of novels); 1906 – Ed Gein; 1908 – Lyndon B. Johnson (36th POTUS); 1916 – Martha Raye; 1929 – Ira Levin♪ ♫; 1939 – William Least Heat-Moon; 1942 – Daryl Dragon(the captain from Capt. & Tennille); 1943 – Tuesday Weld; 1947 – Barbara Bach; 1949 – Jeff Cook(Alabama); 1950 – Charles Fleischer (voiced Roger Rabbit); 1952 – Paul 'PeeWee Herman' Reubens; 1953 – Alex Lifeson(Rush), Peter Stormare ('Slippery Pete' from Seinfeld; The Big Lebowski, one of my favorite villain actors); 1956 – Glen Matlock(Sex Pistols); 1957 – Bernhard Langer; 1959 – Downtown Julie Brown (former MTV vj); 1961 – Tom Ford; 1969 – Chandra Wilson (Grey's Anatomy); 1970 – Tony Kanal(No Doubt); 1973 – Cory Bowles (Trailer Park Boys); 1976 – Sarah Chalke (Scrubs); 1979 – Aaron 'Bitch!' Paul (Breaking Bad); 1988 – Alexa PenaVega

Deaths

1576 – Titian; 1963 – W. E. B. Du Bois; 1964 – Gracie Allen; 1967 – Brian Epstein (managed The Beatles); 1975 – Haile Selassie; 1979 – Louis Mountbatten; 1980 – Douglas Kenney (co-founded National Lampoon); 1990 – Stevie Ray Vaughan; 1996 – Greg Morris (Mission: Impossible)

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August 28

There are 125 days remaining in 2016.

There are 118 days til Christmas.

1609 – Henry Hudson discovers Delaware Bay.

1789 – William Herschel discovers a new moon of Saturn: Enceladus.

1830 – The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's new steam locomotive, Tom Thumb, races a horse-drawn car, presaging steam's role in US railroads. The horse won the race.

1845 – The first issue of Scientific American magazine is published.

1859 – A massive solar storm began, causing a coronal mass ejection to strike the Earth's magnetosphere that generated aurorae that were visible in the middle latitudes. Known as the Carrington Event.

1862 – American Civil War: Second Battle of Bull Run, also known as the Battle of Second Manassas. The battle ends on August 30.

1898 – Caleb Bradham invents the carbonated soft drink that will later be called "Pepsi-Cola".

1937 – Toyota Motors, now the world's largest automobile manufacturer, was spun off from Toyota Industries as an independent company.

1955 – Black teenager Emmett Till is brutally murdered in Mississippi, galvanizing the nascent Civil Rights Movement.

1957 – U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond begins a filibuster to prevent the Senate from voting on the Civil Rights Act of 1957; he stopped speaking 24 hours and 18 minutes later, the longest filibuster ever conducted by a single Senator.

1963 – March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his I Have a Dream speech.

1963 – Emily Hoffert and Janice Wylie are murdered in their Manhattan apartment, prompting the events that would lead to the passing of the Miranda Rights.

1964 – The Philadelphia race riot begins.

1968 – Riots in Chicago, Illinois, during the Democratic National Convention.

1988 – Ramstein air show disaster: Three aircraft of the Frecce Tricolori demonstration team collide and the wreckage falls into the crowd. Seventy-five are killed and 346 seriously injured.

1990 – Iraq declares Kuwait to be its newest province.

1993 – The Galileo spacecraft discovers a moon, later named Dactyl, around 243 Ida, the first known asteroid moon.

Births

1728 – John Stark (no relation to Ned, Arya, Sansa, Rob, Bran, or Rickon); 1749 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust); 1774 – Elizabeth Ann Seton; 1831 – Lucy Webb Hayes (20th FLOTUS); 1899 – Charles Boyer; 1921 – Nancy Kulp ('Miss Hathaway' on The Beverly Hillbillies); 1925 – Billy Grammer, Donald O'Connor; 1929 – Roxie Roker(The Jeffersons, Lenny Kravitz's mother); 1930 – Ben Gazzara; 1942 – Sterling Morrison(The Velvet Underground); 1943 – David Soul; 1952 – Rita Dove; 1956 – Luis Guzmán; 1957 – Rick Rossovich (Top Gun); 1957 – Ai Weiwei; 1958 – Scott Hamilton; 1961 – Jennifer Coolidge('Stifler's Mom' in American Pie movie series, Two Broke Girls); 1965 – Amanda Tapping (Stargate SG-1), Shania Twain♪ ♫; 1969 – Jack Black♪ ♫; 1969 – Jason Priestley; 1982 – LeAnn Rimes♪ ♫; 1986 – Armie Hammer ('Illya Kuryakin' in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. 2013)

Deaths

1784 – Junípero Serra; 1903 – Frederick Law Olmsted; 1987 – John Huston; 1988 – Max Shulman (The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis); 2007 – Hilly Kristal (founded CBGB); 2013 – Edmund B. Fitzgerald (namesake of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald)