TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Thursday, Aug. 27, the 240th day of 2020. There are 126 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in

History: On August 27, 2008, Barack Obama was nominated for president by the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

On this date:

In 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.

In 1858, the second debate between senatorial candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas took place in Freeport, Ill.

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 1963, author, journalist and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois died in Accra, Ghana, at age 95.

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 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 1989, the first U.S. commercial satellite rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida — a Delta booster carrying a British communications satellite, the Marcopolo 1.

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 CRJ100 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 2009, Jaycee Lee Dugard, kidnapped when she was 11, was reunited with her mother 18 years after her abduction in South Lake Tahoe, California.

Ten years ago: Aijalon Gomes, an American who'd been held for seven months in North Korea for trespassing, stepped off a plane in his hometown of Boston accompanied by former President Jimmy Carter, who had flown to Pyongyang to negotiate his freedom.

Five years ago: Ex-NBA star Darryl Dawkins, 58, whose board-shattering dunks earned him the moniker "Chocolate Thunder" and helped pave the way for breakaway rims, died in Allentown, Pennsylvania.