On this date

In 1859, Edwin L. Drake drilled the first successful oil well in the United States, at Titusville, Pa.

In 1883, the island volcano Krakatoa erupted with a series of cataclysmic explosions; the resulting tidal waves in Indonesia’s Sunda Strait claimed some 36,000 lives in Java and Sumatra. In 1949, a violent white mob prevented an outdoor concert headlined by Paul Robeson from taking place near Peekskill, N.Y. (The concert was held eight days later.) In 1962, the United States launched the Mariner 2 space probe, which flew past Venus in December 1962. In 1967, Brian Epstein, manager of the Beatles, was found dead in his London flat from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills; he was 32. In 1975, Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia’s 3,000-yearold monarchy, died in Addis Ababa at age 83 almost a year after being overthrown. 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.

Barack Obama was nominated for president by the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist who fatally shot 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, rested his case without presenting any evidence during his trial’s penalty phase. (Hasan ended up being sentenced to death.)

Hurricane Harvey sent devastating floods into Houston, with rising water chasing thousands of people to rooftops or higher ground; streets became rivers navigable only by boat.