August 28

1207 King John decrees Liverpool a borough.

1609 Delaware Bay is discovered for the Netherlands on the third voyage of Henry Hudson.

1619 Ferdinand II is elected Holy Roman Emperor. As a result of his policy of "One church, one king" and his attempts to eradicate Protestantism, he will cause the Thirty Years War to come about.

1640 The English-Scottish Wars: The Scots under Alexander Leslie defeat royalist English forces under Lord Conway at the battle of Newburn, near Newcastle, which is then occupied by the Scots.

1645 In Poland, King Vladislav IV convenes the Conference of Thorn. Through it he seeks to bring reunion among the 26 Catholic, 28 Lutheran and 24 Calvinist theologians in attendance. Discussions continue through November, but no satisfying theological fusion is ever achieved.

1655 New Amsterdam and Peter Stuyvesant bar Jews from military service.

1749 Birth: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, German poet, playwright and novelist, best known for Faust. Died in 1832.

1828 Birth: Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy.

1831 Birth: Lucy Ware Webb Hayes, wife of 19th US President Rutherford B. Hayes. Died in 1889.

1833 Birth: Sir Edward Burne-Jones, in England, Pre-Raphaelite painter, designer.

1849 Venice under Daniele Manin finally surrenders to the Austrians under Radetsky, the city having been under siege since July 20 after proclaiming independence against Austrian rule.

1850 Wagner's opera, "Lohengrin," is performed for the first time in Weimar Germany.

1862 Belle Boyd is released from Old Capital Prison in Washington, DC. Note: Belle Boyd, "Le Belle Rebelle" Confederate Spy, born Isabelle Boyd in Martinsburg, Va.(now West Virginia) on May 9 1844. she attended Mount Washington Female College in Baltimore, from 1856 to 1860. She was formally presented to Washington, DC society just before the Rebellion broke out. Returning to Martinsburg, she took part in fund raising events on behalf of the Confederacy. When her town was occupied by Union solders in July 1861, Miss Boyd mingled with the Union Officers, picking up bits of military secrets which she passed along by messenger to Confederate officials. The first inception of one of these messages only brought a reprimand from the Union officers.

She was appointed courier for Generals Beauregard and Thomas Jackson. She was arrested and detained in Baltimore in 1862 then released. She lived with an aunt in Fort Royal Virginia. There she eavesdropped on Gen James Shield and then rode fifteen miles in the night to deliver the intelligence she gain to the Confederates. She became a Confederate heroine in May 1862 by signaling Jackson's troops to accelerate their advance to save the bridges at Fort Royal. She was arrested again when the Union forces retook Fort Royal. She was held in the old Capitol Prison in Washington. In all she was arrested six times and imprisoned on two occasions. The second time she was arrested, she was aboard the blockade runner the "greyhound" enroute to London. Belle Boyd had important dispatches from Jefferson Davis. While in prison she fell in love with her captor. She managed to escape and fled to Canada. She sailed to England and married, Union Lt. Samuel Wylde Harding Jr. in London. When he returned to the United States, Harding was arrested for treason for aiding in Boyd's escape, and imprisoned. He was released but his health was ruined and he soon died, leaving Bele to support herself. She wrote a dramatic account of her life as a spy (1865) and made her debut as an actress in Manchester, England in 1866.

1867 The US occupies the Midway Islands in the Pacific.

1878 Birth: George Hoyt Whipple, US astrophysicist (Nobel-1934).

1879 Cetewayo (or Cetshwayo), last of the great Zulu kings, is captured by the British at the end of the Zulu wars.

1908 Birth: Roger Tory Peterson, in New York, ornithologist, naturalist, author of the innovative bird book A Field Guide to Birds. Died in 1996.

1910 Montenegro proclaims its independence from the Ottoman empire, with Nicholas I as ruler.

1914 WW1: A British raid into the Heligoland Bight results in the war's first naval battle. In the battle of Heligoland Bight in the North Sea, four German ships are sunk and 1,000 sailors lost. British casualties are 33 killed.

1917 Ten suffragists are arrested as they picket the White House.

1919 Birth: Sir Godfrey Hounsfield, in Nottinghamshire, inventor of the EMI computer-assisted tomography scanner (CAT scanner), which allows detailed X-ray slices of the human body to be produced.

1922 The first commercial to be broadcast on radio is heard on WEAF in New York City. Announcer H. M.  Blackwell speaks about Hawthorne Court, a group of apartment buildings in Queens, New York. The Queensboro Realty Company, of Jackson Heights, bought what was called Toll Broadcasting. WEAF, owned by AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph, in those days) sold their block programming, five one-minute programs, one a day for five days, for $50 plus long-distance toll fees. The Queensboro Realty Company paid $100 for 10 minutes of commercial airtime.

1932 The Tomatina Tomato Throwing Festival is held for the first time in Spain. Note: I guess it beats being chased down the street by mad bulls. Do they have cable in Spain?

1933 The BBC is used for the first time by the police hunting a wanted man as an appeal is broadcast for information on murder suspect Stanley Hobday.

1938 The first degree given to a ventriloquist's dummy is awarded to Charlie McCarthy, Edgar Bergen's wooden partner. The honorary degree, 'Master of Innuendo and Snappy Comeback,' is presented by Ralph Dennis, the dean of the School of Speech at Northwestern University. Note: This is hardly the first or last time that a degree is awarded to a dummy.

1939 Karl Maria Weisthor (Wiligut) officially retires from the SS. Himmler requests the return of Weisthor's SS Totenkopfring, (Deathshead ring), SS dagger, and sword. Himmler personally keeps them under lock and key. (Weisthor file, Berlin Document Center; Roots)

1939 -04: Dahlerus has an early morning meeting with Goering and Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes, Counselor of the British Embassy, before breakfasting again with Goering.

1939 -04: Rationing is imposed in Germany.

1939 -04: Polish Foreign Minister Beck refuses to go to Berlin. Beck says he accepts the principle of direct negotiations, but towards midnight tells British Ambassador Kennard that Polish mobilization is proceeding.

1939 -04: Chamberlain requests information concerning Hitler's intentions towards Poland. Ambassador Henderson returns to Berlin from London.

1939 -04: Slovak Premier Father Josef Tiso invites the Germany army to occupy Slovakia. (Edelheit)

1939 -04: The Netherland (Holland) orders a general military mobilization.

1940 WW2: The Luftwaffe launches the first of a series of four air raids on Liverpool. About 160 aircraft are sent each night.

1941 WW2: The German U-boat U-570 is captured by the British and renamed Graph.

1941 Church and Reich: The Bavarian order forbidding prayers in school and the gradual removal of all crucifixes is revoked. A number of public protests and a strong stand by Bishop Faulhaber prompts the revocation. (See April 23, 1941). (Lewy)

1941 WW2: Over 600,000 Volga Germans are deported by Stalin to Siberia and Kazakhstan.

1942 Those Vichy French: Abetz, Papal Nuncio to Vichy France, requests Laval to mitigate the severity of measures taken against the Jews during the mass deportations that had recently begun in France. (PA Bonn; Lewy)

1943 Holocaust: Danish resistance to the German occupation undermines continued German cooperation and the Danish-German Agreement is abolished. Martial Law is declared. The SS hopes to use this opportunity to deport all 7,200 of Denmark's Jews. (Atlas)

1944 Holocaust: Hundreds of Jews die when the Germans evacuate slave labor camps in Estonia by sea. (Atlas)

1945 The principal speaker of the evening at a meeting of American Action at the Clark Hotel in Los Angeles tells guests and members that Jews, international bankers and Jewish Communist immigrants from Russia had acquired almost complete control of American business, government and labor.

1945 Eduard Schulte, the man said to have first warned the West about the Holocaust, becomes an important official in the new German central government set up by the Allies. He is recommended or the position by Allen Dulles, head of the OSS in Switzerland. (Silence)

1945 Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-Tung arrives in Chunking to confer with Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek in a futile effort to avert civil war.

1957 Senator Thurmond begins his 24 hour filibuster against the civil rights bill.

1961 The earliest existing Roman mosaics in Britain are discovered in Fishbourne, West Sussex.

1963 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gives his "I Have a Dream" speech at a civil rights rally in Washington, attended by more than 200,000 people.

1965 The Nam: The Viet Cong are routed in the Mekong Delta by US forces, with more than 50 killed.

1966 The Nam: It is reported in three Soviet newspapers that North Vietnamese pilots are undergoing training in a secret Soviet air base to fly supersonic interceptors against US aircraft. This confirms earlier reports that the Soviets had initiated close relations with North Vietnam after a visit by Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin to Hanoi in February 1965. He signed economic and military treaties with the North, giving full support for their war effort. The Soviets and North Vietnamese leadership planned military strategy and discussed North Vietnam's needs to prosecute such a strategy. The Soviets agreed to supply the necessary war materials, to include air defense weapons for the North and offensive weapons to be employed in the South. At one point in the war, the Soviets would supply 80 percent of all supplies reaching North Vietnam.

1974 Soyuz 15 returns to Earth.

1981 John Hinckley Jr. pleads innocent to the charge of attempting to kill US President Ronald Reagan. Hinckley is later acquitted by reason of insanity.

1983 Menachim Begin announces his resignation as prime minister of Israel.

1986 Jerry Whitworth, a retired Navy warrant officer, is convicted for his role in a Soviet spy ring and is sentenced to 365 years in prison and fined $410,000.

1988 An unsuccessful coup attempt, against President Corazon Aquino in the Philippines, results in the deaths of 50 people.

1988 33 people are killed when jets from an Italian Air Force display team collide in midair and one crashes into the crowd during an air show at Ramstein, West Germany.

1990 Desert Shield: Iraq declares Kuwait to be its 19th province and renames Kuwait City al-Kadhima.

1994 Father Jean-Marie Vincent, a prominent Haitian Catholic priest loyal to deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is shot dead by suspected paramilitary gunmen.

1995 A mortar shell kills 38 people in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the act that triggers NATO airstrikes against the Bosnian Serbs.

1996 President Clinton and VP Gore are renominated as the Democratic Party ticket.

1997 Proposition 209, California's controversial anti-affirmative action measure approved by the state's voters a year earlier, officially takes effect.

1997 Nearly 300 people are killed in a single late-night altercation between the government and Islamic militants in Algeria.

1998 The Pakistani prime minister, leading his nation boldly into the third century, creates a new Islamic order and legal system based on the Koran.

2002 Four men, three of them working at the airport, are indicted in Detroit as suspected terrorists. Another man, suspected of trying to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon, is indicted in Seattle, Washington.

2002 Two executives of the embattled WorldCom are indicted on charges they conspired to cover-up millions and millions of dollars in losses at the company.

2002

2003

2004

2004