Appeal For Amnesty In Spain At London In Great Britain On May 1962.

Appeal for Amnesty campaign launches

Born on This Day

Portrait Of Betty Shabazz

Betty Shabazz

1934 - 1997

Civil-rights activist who continued her work in education after the 1965 slaying of her husband, Black nationalist Malcolm X.

Jim Thorpe

1887 - 1953

Stand-out all-around athlete in track and field, football and baseball. First Native American to win Olympic gold for the United States.

Gladys Knight Portrait Session

Gladys Knight

1944 -

Singer dubbed the "Empress of Soul." Hits include "Midnight Train to Georgia" and "That's What Friends Are For."

Betty ShabazzGetty Images

Jim ThorpeGetty Images

Gladys KnightGetty Images

1934

MAY28

The Dionne quintuplets, the first quints known to survive infancy, are born in Ontario. Exploited by the government, the girls were housed for their first nine years in a kind of "baby zoo," ogled by thousands of tourists daily.

Timeline

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

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 read

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 read

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 read

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 […]

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 read

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 read

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 read

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 read

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 read

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 read

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 read

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

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 […]

1:04m read read

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 read

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 read

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 read

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 read

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