August 27
First successful oil well drilled
1859: Edwin Laurentine Drake struck oil on this day while drilling in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Drake, a railway conductor in New Haven, Connecticut, had studied the techniques of drilling salt wells. He was encouraged to drill for oil by George H. Bissell, a local landowner who was aware of Benjamin Silliman's report of the potential value of petroleum. Drake began drilling in 1858 and finally struck oil at a depth of 21 metres (69 feet) on this day. With the spread of Drake's drilling techniques, Titusville and other northwestern Pennsylvania communities became boomtowns.
1979: Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
1939: German Ernst Heinrich Heinkel's He 178, a turbojet-powered aircraft, made the first jet flight.
1928: The Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed between France and the United States in a series of peacekeeping efforts after World War I.
1776: During the American Revolution, British forces under General William Howe defeated George Washington and the American Continental Army in the Battle of Long Island.
1576: The great Italian Renaissance painter Titian died in Venice.
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