12 History Lessons + 7 Births & 7 Deaths for August 27, 2025
Today’s History:
- 1776 – British forces defeat the Patriots at the Battle of Brooklyn (Long Island) in the American Revolution.
- 1859 – Edwin Drake’s well strikes oil at Titusville, Pennsylvania, launching the modern petroleum industry.
- 1883 – Krakatoa erupts with cataclysmic force; explosions and tsunamis kill tens of thousands and affect global climate.
- 1896 – The Anglo-Zanzibar War—often called the shortest war in history—breaks out and ends within about 40 minutes.
- 1928 – The Kellogg–Briand Pact is signed in Paris, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy.
- 1939 – Heinkel He 178 makes the first flight of a turbojet-powered aircraft.
- 1955 – The first edition of The Guinness Book of Records is published in Great Britain.
- 1964 – Mary Poppins is released in the United States.
- 1976 – Transgender tennis player Renée Richards is barred from the U.S. Open by the USTA (a decision overturned the next year).
- 1979 – The IRA assassinates Lord Louis Mountbatten with a boat bomb off Ireland’s northwest coast.
- 1991 – Moldova declares independence from the Soviet Union.
- 2003 – Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years.
Today’s Birthdays:
- 1961 – Tom Ford, fashion designer & filmmaker (A Single Man) (64).
- 1961 – Yolanda Adams, gospel singer and radio host (64).
- 1969 – Chandra Wilson, actress (Grey’s Anatomy) (56).
- 1975 – Mase, rapper (Bad Boy Records; Harlem World) (50).
- 1979 – Aaron Paul, actor (Breaking Bad, Westworld) (46).
- 1988 – Alexa PenaVega, actress (Spy Kids) (37).
- 1992 – Kim Petras, pop singer (“Unholy,” Feed the Beast) (33).
Today’s Deaths:
- 1782 – John Laurens, American Revolutionary War officer and abolition advocate (27).
- 1963 – W.E.B. Du Bois, sociologist, historian, and NAACP co-founder (95).
- 1964 – Gracie Allen, comedian of Burns & Allen (69).
- 1965 – Le Corbusier, modernist architect and urban planner (77).
- 1967 – Brian Epstein, manager of The Beatles (32).
- 1975 – Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia (83).
- 1990 – Stevie Ray Vaughan, blues guitarist (35).
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