ED DANAHUE

August 27 is known in some circles as Oil and Gas Industry
Appreciation Day. This date, in 1859, is also when Edwin
Drake drilled the first successful oil well in the world.

(Col) Edwin L. Drake (
March 29, 1819 – November 9, 1880)
Wikimedia Commons

On August 26, 1939, the first televised Major League baseball
game was broadcast on station W2XBS, the station that was
to become WNBC-TV. Announcer Red Barber called the game
between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at
Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York.

This all started in April of 1939 with the opening of The World’s
Fair, when David Sarnoff told the nation that RCA had “added
radio sight to sound”, and officially kicked off the age of
television.

Barber (in suit) called the first game on NBC Radio and
moved over to TV for the second game.

The President of RCA, David Sarnoff, dedicating the RCA
Building at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York.

Lyndon B. Johnson was nominated to run for the presidency at
the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

His running mate would be Hubert H. Humphrey. Former Vice
President Johnson had assumed the reigns of government in
November 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated.

Upon assuming office, he inherited a commitment to Vietnam
where Kennedy had sent military advisors to support the South Vietnamese government in Saigon.

Following the Tonkin Gulf incident earlier in August when
North Vietnamese torpedo boats reportedly attacked U.S.
destroyers, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
empowering Johnson to “take all necessary measures to repel
an armed attack against the forces of the United States and to
prevent further aggression.”

On August 25, 1939, The Wizard of Oz, which became one of the
best-loved movies in history, opened in theaters around the U.S. 

Based on the 1900 children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,
by L. Frank Baum (1856-1919), the film starred Judy Garland as
the young Kansas farm girl Dorothy.