Saturday, August 27

This Day In History

• 1770   German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in Stuttgart.
  
• 1660   John Milton’s books were burned in London, because of the author’s attacks on King Charles II.
  
• 1858   The first cabled news dispatch was sent to, and published by, "The New York Sun" newspaper. The story was about China meeting the peace demands of England and France.
  
• 1859   Edwin L. Drake drilled the first successful U.S. oil well near Titusville, Pa.
  
• 1883   The island volcano Krakatoa erupted; the resulting tidal waves in Indonesia's Sunda Strait claimed some 36,000 lives in Java and Sumatra.
  
• 1892   Fire seriously damaged New York City's original Metropolitan Opera House at Broadway and 39th Street.
  
• 1928   The Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed in Paris, outlawing war and providing for the peaceful settlement of disputes.
  
• 1945   American troops began landing in Japan following the surrender of the Japanese government in World War II.
  
• 1962   The United States launched the Mariner 2 space probe, which flew past Venus the following December.
  
• 1967   The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein was found dead in his London flat from an overdose of sleeping pills.
  
• 1979   British war hero Lord Louis Mountbatten was killed off the coast of Ireland in a boat explosion; the Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility.
  
• 2001   Israeli helicopters fired a pair of rockets through office windows and killed senior PLO leader Mustafa Zibri.
  
• 2003   A granite monument of the Ten Commandments that became a lightning rod in a legal storm over church and state was wheeled from the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court building in Montgomery.
  

Happy Birthday To

• 551 B.C.   Confucius (K’ung Fu-tzu) (philosopher; died in 479 B.C.) 1809   Hannibal Hamlin (15th U.S. Vice President [under Abraham Lincoln: 1861-1865]; died July 4, 1891)
  
• 1908   Lyndon (Baines) Johnson (36th U.S. President)
  
• 1910   Mother Teresa (Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu) (Nobel Peace Prize-winner [1979]: missionary, humanitarian; died Sep 5, 1997; died Sep 5, 1997)
  
• 1916   Martha Raye (Margaret Teresa Yvonne Reed) (comedienne, actress: McMillan and Wife, All Star Revue, The Martha Raye Show, The Concorde, Airport ’79, Rhythm on the Range; winner of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award [1969], Presidential Medal of Freedom [1993]; died Oct 19, 1994)
  
• 1943   Tuesday Weld (Susan Kerr) (actress)