By: HISTORY.com Editors

1991

Ethiopian capital falls to rebels, ending 17 years of Marxist rule

Published: February 09, 2010Last Updated: May 27, 2025

Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, falls to forces of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), formally ending 17 years of Marxist rule in the East African country.

In 1974, Haile Selassie, the leader of Ethiopia since 1930, was deposed in a military coup. Ethiopia’s new rulers set up a Marxist regime, executed thousands of their political opponents, and aligned themselves with the Soviet Union. War with Somalia and severe droughts during the 1980s brought famine to the Ethiopian people, leading to considerable internal strife and independence movements in the regions of Eritrea and Tigre.

In early 1991, the EPRDF, a Tigrean-led coalition of rebel organizations under the leadership of Meles Zenawi, began to achieve real successes and defeated the Ethiopian army, forcing military dictator Haile Mariam Mengistu to flee the country. On May 28, 1991, in the midst of cease-fire talks, EPRDF tanks entered Addis Ababa virtually unopposed. Soon after, a transition government was formed, with Meles Zenawi as its president. In July, a new democratic constitution was drafted, and Eritrean independence was acknowledged without incident.

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Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on May 28th

1588

Spanish Armada sets sail to secure English Channel

A massive Spanish fleet, known as the “Invincible Armada,” sets sail from Lisbon on a mission to secure control of the English Channel and transport a Spanish invasion army to Britain from the Netherlands. In the late 1580s, Queen Elizabeth’s support of the Dutch rebels in the Spanish Netherlands led King Philip II of Spain […]

1:52m read

1754

First blood of the French and Indian War

In the first engagement of the French and Indian War, a Virginia militia under 22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington defeats a French reconnaissance party in southwestern Pennsylvania. In a surprise attack, the Virginians killed 10 French soldiers from Fort Duquesne, including the French commander, Coulon de Jumonville, and took 21 prisoners. Only one of Washington’s […]

3:46m read

1830

Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act into law

On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act into law. The bill enabled the federal government to negotiate with southeastern Native American tribes for their ancestral lands in states such as Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee. As a result, some 60,000 Native Americans were forced westward into “Indian Territory” (present-day […]

1:16m read

1861

President Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus is challenged

On May 28, 1861, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland issues Ex parte Merryman, challenging the authority of President Abraham Lincoln and the U.S. military to suspend the writ of habeas corpus (the legal procedure that prevents the government from holding an individual indefinitely without showing cause) in Maryland. Early in the war, President […]

1918

U.S. troops score victory at Cantigny

In the first sustained American offensive of World War I, an Allied force including a full brigade of nearly 4,000 United States soldiers captures the village of Cantigny, on the Somme River in France, from their German enemy. Though the United States formally entered World War I on the side of the Allies in April […]

2:04m read

1935

John Steinbeck publishes “Tortilla Flat”

John Steinbeck’s first successful novel, Tortilla Flat, is published on May 28, 1935. Steinbeck, a native Californian, had studied writing intermittently at Stanford between 1920 and 1925 but never graduated. He moved to New York and worked as a manual laborer and journalist while writing his first two novels, which were not successful. He married […]

1:12m read

1936

A single horsehair helps convict the killer of Nancy Titterton

On May 28, 1936, a killer is convicted on the basis of a single horse hair. That equine strand was the decisive clue in the rape-murder of Nancy Titterton in New York City. Titterton, a novelist and the wife of NBC executive Lewis Titterton, was raped and strangled in her upscale home on Beekman Place […]

1:42m read

1937

Volkswagen is founded

On May 28, 1937, the government of Germany—then under the control of Adolf Hitler of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party—forms a new state-owned automobile company, then known as Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH. Later that year, it was renamed simply Volkswagenwerk, or “The People’s Car Company.” Originally operated by the German Labor Front, […]

2:16m read

1957

Baseball owners allow Dodgers and Giants to move

On May 28, 1957, National League owners vote unanimously to allow the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers to move to San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectively, at the mid-season owner’s meeting in Chicago, Illinois. There were, however, conditions attached to the owners’ decision. First, either both teams had to move or neither could, which […]

2:12m read

1961

Appeal for Amnesty campaign launches

The British newspaper The London Observer publishes British lawyer Peter Benenson’s article “The Forgotten Prisoners,” launching the Appeal for Amnesty 1961. The movement later became Amnesty International.

2:08m read

1964

Palestine Liberation Organization is founded

On May 28, 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization was founded. In February of 1969, Yasir Arafat was elected as its leader. By 1974, when he addressed the United Nations, Arafat had made significant strides towards establishing new respectability for the PLO’s campaign for a Palestinian homeland. But gaining legitimacy hinged on cooling down terrorism, and […]

0:18m read

1983

Irene Cara has a #1 pop hit with the “Flashdance” theme

Irene Cara’s song “Flashdance (What a Feeling)”, from the Flashdance movie soundtrack, goes to the top of the U.S. pop charts on May 28, 1983. “Flashdance (What a Feeling)” was not the first hit song from a movie soundtrack for Irene Cara, whose star was launched by the 1980 film Fame. Cara not only played […]

1:30m read

1998

Comic Phil Hartman killed by wife

On May 28, 1998, the comedian and actor Phil Hartman, famous for his work on Saturday Night Live and NewsRadio, is shot to death by his wife, Brynn, in a murder-suicide. He was 49. In 1986, Hartman earned a spot on the long-running NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. In his eight years on […]

1:36m read

2005

Murder suspect removed after three days perched on crane

Shortly after midnight on May 28, 2005, Carl Edward Roland, 41, is removed from a crane perched 18 stories above Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood. Roland was wanted by police in connection with the murder of his ex-girlfriend Jennifer Gonzalez. Police in Pinellas County, Florida, discovered the badly beaten body of Gonzalez, 36, in a retention pond […]

1:22m read

2006

Barry Bonds hits 715th home run to pass Babe Ruth on MLB list

On May 28, 2006, San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds hits a 90-mph fastball from the Colorado Rockies’ Byung-Hyun Kim over the center-field fence for his 715th career home run to pass Babe Ruth for the second-most home runs in MLB history. “I knew it was definitely gone,” Bonds says afterward. “There was no doubt.” […]

1:18m read

2010

Terrorists attack Ahmadiyya mosques in Pakistan

As Friday prayers came to a close on May 28, 2010 in Lahore, Pakistan, seven terrorists wielding guns, grenades and suicide vests stormed into two crowded Ahmadi Muslim mosques and opened fire, killing 94 victims and injuring more than 120. The coordinated attacks took place just minutes apart. At the Bait-ul-Noor Mosque in Model Town—an […]

2:00m read

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