On this day: August 28

Events on August 28

• 475 Orestes took control of Ravenna, the capital of the Western Roman Empire, forcing Emperor Julius Nepos to flee. Wikipedia
• 632 Fatimah, daughter of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, dies, with her cause of death being a controversial topic among the Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims. Wikipedia
• 1542 Ottoman–Portuguese conflicts: During the Battle of Wofla, the Portuguese commander Cristóvão da Gama was captured by the Adal Sultanate and executed the next day. Wikipedia
• 1619 Ferdinand II, King of Bohemia and Hungary, was unanimously elected Holy Roman Emperor. Wikipedia
• 1640 Bishops' Wars: Scottish Covenanter forces led by Alexander Leslie defeated the English army near Newburn, England. Wikipedia
• 1789 With the first use of his 1.2-metre (3.9 ft) telescope, then the largest in the world, William Herschel discovered a new moon of Saturn, later named Enceladus. Wikipedia
• 1830 Tom Thumb, the first American-built steam locomotive, took part in an impromptu race against a horse-drawn car in Maryland. Wikipedia
• 1833 The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 receives royal assent, making the purchase or ownership of slaves illegal in the British Empire with exceptions. Wikipedia
• 1859 The Carrington event is the strongest geomagnetic storm on record to strike the Earth. Electrical telegraph service is widely disrupted. Wikipedia
• 1862 American Civil War: The Second Battle of Bull Run, also known as the Battle of Second Manassas, begins in Virginia. The battle ends on August 30 with another Union defeat. Wikipedia
• 1867 The United States takes possession of the (at this point unoccupied) Midway Atoll. Wikipedia
• 1909 The 1909 Monterrey hurricane dissipated; one of the deadliest Atlantic tropical cyclones on record, it killed an estimated 4,000 people throughout Mexico. Wikipedia
• 1916 A confrontation at Blargies prison camp in France led to a charge of mutiny for New Zealand private John Braithwaite, for which he was later executed. Wikipedia
• 1916 World War I: Germany declares war on Romania. Wikipedia
• 1924 The Georgian opposition stages the August Uprising against the Soviet Union. Wikipedia
• 1937 Toyota Motors becomes an independent company. Wikipedia
• 1944 World War II: Marseille and Toulon are liberated. Wikipedia
• 1950 American tennis player Althea Gibson became the first African-American woman to compete at the U.S. National Championships. Wikipedia
• 1955 African-American teenager Emmett Till was lynched near Money, Mississippi, for allegedly flirting with a white woman, energizing the nascent American civil rights movement. Wikipedia
• 1963 American civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the speech "I Have a Dream" during the March on Washington, calling for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. Wikipedia
• 1973 Swedish police used gas bombs to end a seven-day hostage situation in Stockholm; the hostages had bonded with their captors during the incident, leading to the term Stockholm syndrome. Wikipedia
• 1987 Construction began on the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, the tallest building in North Korea. Wikipedia
• 1988 Ramstein air show disaster: Three aircraft of the Frecce Tricolori demonstration team collide and the wreckage falls into the crowd. Seventy are killed and 346 seriously injured. Wikipedia
• 1993 The NASA spacecraft Galileo flew by the asteroid 243 Ida and took photographs that later revealed the first known asteroid moon. Wikipedia
• 2009 NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery launches on STS-128. Wikipedia
• 2021 The second phase of the Thomson-East Coast MRT line was opened for service. Wikipedia

Born on August 28

• 1749 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German novelist, poet, playwright, and diplomat (died 1832) Wikipedia
• 1833 Edward Burne-Jones, English artist of the Pre-Raphaelite movement (died 1898) Wikipedia
• 1878 George Whipple, American physician and pathologist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1976) Wikipedia
• 1899 Andrei Platonov, Russian author and poet (died 1951) Wikipedia
• 1899 Charles Boyer, French-American actor, singer, and producer (died 1978) Wikipedia
• 1910 Tjalling Koopmans, Dutch-American mathematician and economist Nobel Prize laureate (died 1985) Wikipedia
• 1916 C. Wright Mills American sociologist and author (died 1962) Wikipedia
• 1917 Jack Kirby, Comic Book Artist and Writer (died 1994) Wikipedia
• 1919 Godfrey Hounsfield, English biophysicist and engineer Nobel Prize laureate (died 2004) Wikipedia
• 1921 Lidia Gueiler Tejada, the first female President of Bolivia (died 2011) Wikipedia
• 1925 Donald O'Connor, American actor, singer, and dancer (died 2003) Wikipedia
• 1930 Ben Gazzara, American actor (died 2012) Wikipedia
• 1938 Paul Martin, Canadian lawyer and politician, 21st Prime Minister of Canada Wikipedia
• 1957 Ivo Josipović, Croatian lawyer, jurist, and politician, 3rd President of Croatia Wikipedia
• 1957 Ai Weiwei, Chinese contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist Wikipedia
• 1962 David Fincher, American director and producer Wikipedia
• 1965 Shania Twain, Grammy Award-winning Canadian Country Singer-Songwriter Wikipedia
• 1982 Thiago Motta, Brazilian-Italian footballer Wikipedia
• 1989 César Azpilicueta, Spanish footballer Wikipedia
• 1989 Valtteri Bottas, Finnish race car driver Wikipedia
• 1990 Bojan Krkić, Spanish footballer Wikipedia
• 1998 Weston McKennie, American soccer player Wikipedia

Died on August 28

• 388 Magnus Maximus, Roman emperor (born 335) Wikipedia
• 430 Augustine of Hippo, Algerian bishop, theologian, and saint (born 354) Wikipedia
• 632 Fatimah, daughter of Muhammad (born 605) Wikipedia
• 876 Louis the German, Frankish king (born 804) Wikipedia
• 1481 Afonso V, king of Portugal (born 1432) Wikipedia
• 1645 Hugo Grotius, Dutch playwright, philosopher, and jurist (born 1583) Wikipedia
• 1943 Boris III of Bulgaria (born 1894) Wikipedia
• 1984 Muhammad Naguib, Egyptian general and politician, 1st President of Egypt (born 1901) Wikipedia
• 1985 Ruth Gordon, American actress and screenwriter (born 1896) Wikipedia
• 1987 John Huston, Irish actor, director, and screenwriter (born 1906) Wikipedia
• 1995 Michael Ende, German scientist and author (born 1929) Wikipedia
• 2006 Melvin Schwartz, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1932) Wikipedia
• 2020 Chadwick Boseman, American actor and playwright (born 1976) Wikipedia
• 2026 Harald V of Norway (born 1937) Wikipedia

Holidays and observances

• Christian feast day: Alexander of Constantinople Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Augustine of Hippo Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Edmund Arrowsmith Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Florentina Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Hermes Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Joaquina Vedruna de Mas Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Moses the Black Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: August 28 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics) Wikipedia
• National Grandparents Day (Mexico) Wikipedia

Sources

• Wikipedia — “August 28” — events, births, deaths and observances (text under CC BY-SA 4.0) (checked 2026-10-15)
• Wikipedia — “Selected anniversaries/August 28” — the anniversaries editors chose for the date and the article each one is about (checked 2026-10-15)
• Wikidata — in how many language editions each entry's own article exists, used to fill the lists (CC0) (checked 2026-10-15)
• vacanza/holidays (open-source holiday rules, MIT licence) — holiday rules used to build the lists (checked 2026-10-15)

The events, births, deaths and observances above are from the English Wikipedia article “August 28” and the articles it links to (authors and history), retrieved 2026-10-15 through the Wikimedia “On this day” feed. They are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0; this selection is shared under the same licence. Every anniversary that Wikipedia's editors selected for August 28 stays on the list; the remaining places, up to 26 events, 22 births and 14 deaths, go to the entries whose own article — about the event itself, or else the person or thing it is about — appears in the most language editions (counted from Wikidata); an article about a person or thing, which covers far more than one day, counts half. An entry with no article of its own counts, also at half, by the least covered article it links, and one that links only places counts for nothing. Each list runs by year, and the wording is unchanged apart from removing references to pictures, audio and video.