On This Day: August 27

August 27 opens three doors at once: oil rising from a Pennsylvania creek, a sultan's palace that fell in forty minutes, and a jet that left the runway without a propeller. Three scenes ask what happens when a new kind of power suddenly becomes usable. 1

On August 27, 1859, near Titusville, Pennsylvania, Edwin Drake struck oil at about 69½ feet. He had come as an agent of the Seneca Oil Company, aiming to produce crude in commercial quantities for refining into kerosene. With salt-well driller William Smith, he adapted salt-well methods and drove iron pipe to keep the borehole from collapsing. 23

The well began producing on a scale that local surface seeps never could—ASME records an average of about 1,000 gallons a day for three years. Titusville and nearby towns became boomtowns. Drake did not patent his pipe method and later struggled financially, but the technique he demonstrated marked the start of the modern U.S. petroleum industry. 4

On August 27, 1896, the Anglo-Zanzibar War began and ended in about forty minutes—widely remembered as the shortest war in recorded history. After Sultan Ḥamad ibn Thuwayn died on August 25, Prince Khālid ibn Barghash seized the palace and declared himself sultan against Britain's preferred successor. Britain issued an ultimatum: stand down by 9:00 a.m. on the 27th. Khālid refused. 5

At 9:00 a.m., British warships opened fire. The wooden palace caught fire; the royal yacht Glasgow was sunk. By about 9:40 a.m., Khālid's flag was down and he had fled to the German consulate. Roughly 500 of his supporters were killed or wounded; one British sailor was seriously injured. Britain installed Ḥamud ibn Moḥammed, who accepted British terms including the abolition of slavery. 15

On August 27, 1939, the Heinkel He 178 made the world's first jet-powered aircraft flight. German designer Hans von Ohain had built a centrifugal-flow turbojet, the HeS 3B, for Ernst Heinkel's aircraft. The engine performed, though the landing gear failed to retract and kept the plane from reaching its planned speed. 67

The flight came nearly two years before Britain's Gloster E.28/39. Jet fighters would not enter service until 1944, but August 27 marked the moment powered flight left the propeller behind. 7

August 27 leaves three new powers in the open: oil drawn from underground, a war decided before mid-morning, and a plane that flew without a propeller. Each one changed what came next.