August 28

August 28th is the 240th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (241st in leap years), with 125 days remaining.

Events:

1521: The Turks occupy Belgrade
1565: St. Augustine, Florida, established. It is the oldest remaining European occupation in the United States.
1609: Henry Hudson discovers Delaware Bay.
1619: Ferdinand II is elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
1830: The Tom Thumb starts the first railway service in the United States.
1849: After a siege of over one month, Venice, which had declared itself independent, surrenders to Austria.
1850: Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin premieres.
1867: The United States occupy Midway Island.
1879: Cetshwayo, last king of the Zulus, is captured by the English.
1883: Slavery is abolished throughout the British Empire.
1884: First known photograph of a tornado is made.
1913: Queen Wilhelmina opens the Peace Palace in The Hague.
1914: The British fleet beats the German in the Battle of Helgoland.
1916: Germany declares war on Romania.
1916: Italy declares war on Germany.
1917: Ten suffragettes are arrested when picketing the White House.
1938: The concentration camp Mauthausen is opened.
1943: In Denmark, a universal strike against the Nazi occupation is started.
1944: Marseille and Toulon are liberated.
1955: Black Mississippi boy Emmett Till is murdered for whistling to a white woman and calling her baby.
1963: During a 200,000 people's civil rights rally in Washington DC, Martin Luther King gives his famous I have a dream speech.
1972: During the Olympic Games of Munich, Mark Spitz gets his first of seven gold medals in swimming events.
1979: An IRA bomb explodes on the Great Market in Brussels.
1981: The National Center for Disease Control announces a high incidence of Pneumocystis and Kaposi's sarcoma in gay men. Soon, these will be considered symptoms of an illness of the immune system, which will be called AIDS.
1986: Stage of siege called in Bolivia.
1986: US Navy officer Jerry A. Whitworth is sentenced to 365 years imprisonment for espionage for the Soviet Union.
1988: At an air show in Ramstein, West Germany three stunt fighters collide; 70 people die.
1990: Iraq declares Kuwait to be a province.
1993: A dam breaks in Qinghai, West China. 223 die.
1993: 76 die in an airplane crash in Tajikistan.
1993: Teng Cheong elected president of Singapore
1994: First gay pride march in Japan.
1995: A mortar shell kills 38 people in Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The NATO action against Bosnian Serbs was a reaction to this incident.
1996: Britain's prince Charles and princess Diana are divorced.
1998: A new legal system, based on the Koran, is established in Pakistan.
2001: Dutch prime minister Wim Kok announces that he will not be available for another term as PvdA party leader or prime minister after the 2002 elections.

Births:

1749: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (author)
1774: Elizabeth Ann Seton (first American-born saint)
1828: Leo Tolstoi (author) (birthday according to the Julian calendar, it was September 9 according to the Gregorian calendar)
1831: Lucy Hayes (1st lady: wife of Rutherford B. Hayes)
1911: Joseph Luns (Dutch foreign minister and secretary-general of NATO)
1930: Ben Gazzara (actor)
1957: Daniel Stern (actor)
1961: Kim Appleby ([[singer) (Mel & Kim)
1965: Shania Twain (singer)
1969: Jason Priestley (actor)

Deaths:

430 : Augustine of Hippo
1481: Alphonso V (king of Portugal)
1818: Jean Baptiste Point du Sable (founder of Chicago)
1900: Henry Sidgwick (philosopher)
1919: Louis Botha (leader of the Boers in South Africa)
1943: Boris III (king of Bulgaria)
1990: Willy Vandersteen (cartoonist) (Suske & Wiske)
1995: Michael Ende (author) (Neverending Story)

Holidays etc.:

Hong Kong: Liberation Day (1945)
Catholic and other churches: feast day of Saint Augustine of Hippo.

August 27 - August 29 - July 28 - September 28 - more historical anniversaries

See Also: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December