Edwin Laurentine Drake struck oil on this day while drilling in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Drake, a railway conductor in New Haven, Connecticut, had studied the techniques of drilling salt wells. He was encouraged to drill for oil by George H. Bissell, a local landowner who was aware of Benjamin Silliman's report of the potential value of petroleum. Drake began drilling in 1858 and finally struck oil at a depth of 21 metres (69 feet) on this day. With the spread of Drake's drilling techniques, Titusville and other northwestern Pennsylvania communities became boomtowns.
| 1979: | | Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. |
|
| 1939: | | German Ernst Heinrich Heinkel's He 178, a turbojet-powered aircraft, made the first jet flight. |
|
| 1928: | | The Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed between France and the United States in a series of peacekeeping efforts after World War I. |
|
| 1776: | | During the American Revolution, British forces under General William Howe defeated George Washington and the American Continental Army in the Battle of Long Island. |
|
| 1576: | | The great Italian Renaissance painter Titian died in Venice. |
|