Today in history

On Aug. 27, 1776 British forces led by Lt. Gen. William Howe defeated the Continental Army of Gen. George Washington at Long Island, N.Y., in the Revolutionary War.

In 1789 the French National Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

In 1859 the first successful oil well in the United States was drilled near Titusville, Pa., by Col. Edwin Drake.

In 1883 the island volcano Krakatoa blew up; the resulting tidal waves in Indonesia’s Sunda Strait claimed some 36,000 lives in Java and Sumatra.

In 1892 fire seriously damaged New York’s original Metropolitan Opera House. In 1894 Congress passed the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act, which contained a provision for a graduated income tax that was later struck down by the Supreme Court.

In 1928 the Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed in Paris, outlawing war and providing for the peaceful settlement of disputes.

In 1945 American troops began landing in Japan following the surrender of the Japanese government in World War II.

In 1962 the U.S. launched the Mariner 2 space probe. (It would fly past Venus the following December.)

In 1975 Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia’s 3,000-year-old monarchy, died in Addis Ababa at age 83, almost a year after being overthrown. In 1979 Lord Louis Mountbatten was killed off the Irish coast in a boat explosion; the Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility.

In 1990 blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, 35, and four other people were killed when a helicopter ferrying the group crashed near East Troy, Wis.