Appeal for Amnesty campaign launches

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]