On this day: Earl Mountbatten | First oil well

Events, birthdays and anniversaries for 17 August

Remains dug up near Yekaterinburg in 2007 were said to be those of Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich and his sister Anastasia. Picture: AFP/Getty

27 August

55BC: Julius Caesar landed in Britain.

1647: The General Assembly approved the Westminster Confession of Faith.

1859: The world’s first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, by Edwin Drake.

1883: Krakatoa, a volcanic island in the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java, erupted with thousands killed by the resulting tidal waves.

1912: Tarzan Of The Apes, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, first went into print as a magazine serial.

1916: Italy declared war on Germany.

1939: Nazi Germany demanded Danzig and the Polish corridor.

1939: The world’s first jet-propelled aeroplane, the Heinkel 178, made its first flight in Germany.

1945: American troops began landing in Japan at end of Second World War.

1955: The first edition of the Guinness Book Of Records was published.

1966: Francis Chichester left Plymouth in Gipsy Moth IV on his single-handed voyage around the world.

1966: French president Charles de Gaulle arrived in Ethiopia from Somaliland, where his visit was marred by bloody rioting.

1979: Earl Mountbatten was murdered by members of the IRA, in a fishing boat explosion off Mullaghmore, County Sligo.

1986: Twelve black people were shot dead by police in Soweto, and a town councillor was hacked to death in worst riots in more than a year in a black township in South Africa.

1990: BBC Radio Five, Britain’s first new national radio station for 23 years, began broadcasting.

1991: European Community members recognised the independence of the Baltic states.

1995: The International Rugby Union Board, meeting in Paris, ended 125 years of amateur rugby and sanctioned payment to players and officials at all levels.

1996: Seven Iraqis were arrested after hijacking a Sudan Airways jet and ordering it to fly to Stansted in Essex.

2007: The skeletal remains of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia, and his sister Anastasia were found near Yekaterinburg, Russia.

BIRTHDAYS

John Lloyd, tennis player and broadcaster, 59; Peter Ebdon, English snooker player, 43; Archibald Montgomerie, 18th Earl of Eglinton, 6th Earl of Winton, Hereditary Sheriff of Renfrewshire, 74; Lady Antonia Fraser DBE, writer, broadcaster, historian, 81; Herbie Hide, boxer, 42; Sir Michael Holroyd CBE, British biographer, 78; Siobhan Redmond, Glasgow-born actress, 54; Jeanette Winterson OBE, British writer, 54.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 551BC Confucius, Chinese philosopher; 1770 Georg Wilhelm Hegel, German philosopher; 1877 Charles Rolls, motor manufacturer and aviation pioneer; 1882 Sam Goldwyn, American film producer; 1890 Man Ray, photographer, painter and film-maker; 1899 CS Forester, novelist; 1908 Sir Donald Bradman, cricketer; 1908 Lyndon B Johnson, 36th US president; 1925 Viscount Rothermere, newspaper proprietor.

Deaths: 1576 Titian, painter; 1919 Louis Botha, South African Boer general and first prime minister of the Union; 1965 Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret), architect; 1967 Brian Epstein, Beatles manager; 1968 Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent; 1969 Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett, novelist; 1975 Haile Selassie of Ethiopia; 1979 Earl Mountbatten; 1995 Carl Giles, cartoonist.