August 27 Birthday
Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India and the Queen's second cousin, was assassinated on August 27, 1979, by the IRA. A bomb was planted on his fishing boat in County Sligo, Ireland. He was killed along with his fourteen-year-old grandson and another boy. On the same day, the IRA ambushed eighteen British soldiers at Warrenpoint — the deadliest single attack on the British Army during the Troubles. Mountbatten had overseen the partition of India in 1947, which killed over a million people. His death was a propaganda coup for the IRA and a deep wound to the Royal Family. LBJ, born this day in 1908, was the only president to take the oath of office on an airplane. He was 6'4" and intimidating — he would lean into people, physically looming over them, to get what he wanted. He passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, and over 200 other laws in his "Great Society." He also escalated the Vietnam War, sending 540,000 American troops. He could not reconcile the two — the war consumed his presidency. He declined to seek reelection in 1968 and died at sixty-four. People born on August 27 fall under the zodiac sign of Virgo. The birthstone is Peridot and the birth flower is Gladiolus. Historical events on August 27 include 1883: Krakatoa produces its final, cataclysmic explosion, 1979: IRA assassinates Lord Mountbatten and kills 18 soldiers same day, 1962: US launches Mariner 2 toward Venus (first successful interplanetary mission). Famous people born on August 27 include Lyndon B. Johnson (1908), Mother Teresa (1910), Tuesday Weld (1943).