This day in history, Aug. 27, 2015 - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette
Today is Thursday, August 27, the 239th day of 2015. There are 126 days left in the year. 27, 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 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 1939, the first turbojet-powered aircraft, the Heinkel He 178, went on its first full-fledged test flight over Germany. (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 1965, influential Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier, 77, died in Cap Martin, France. 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. Source: www.news-gazette.com
