Aug. 28
Today in history
Today is Aug. 28. On this date in:
476: German military leader Odoacer and his forces captured and executed Orestes, the unofficial ruler of Italy and the father of last emperor of the Western Roman Empire Romulus Augustuslus. Odoacer later disposed of Augustuslus and declared himself King of Italy.
1833: The United Kingdom’s Slavery Abolition Act received royal assent after passing Parliament. Upon going into effect the following year, it freed more than 800,000 enslaved people in the Caribbean and South Africa, though most had to serve as apprentices for another 4-6 years. The act made Canada a free territory for enslaved people from America.
1837: Pharmacists John Lea and William Perrins of Worcester, England, began manufacturing
Worcestershire sauce. According to the story, they made a batch from a recipe a Bengal governor brought back from India, thought it was harsh and forgot it in the cellar for a year or so, at which point they tasted it again and found the results delicious.
1879: King Cetshwayo, the last great king of the Zulus, was captured by the British after his defeat in the British-Zulu War. He defied British rule and became a national hero; his grave is considered sacred to this day.
1917: Ten suffragists were arrested as they picketed the White House to demand that President Woodrow Wilson support a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote. The protest had started in January and drew more than 1,000 women over the course of the year. Wilson announced in January 1918 that he would support such an amendment.
1941: SS and police forces killed more than 23,000 Jews in occupied Ukraine. Soldiers marched the victims to bomb craters at Kamianets-Podilskyi and turned machine guns on them; they were either shot or smothered. It was one of the first large scale massacres of the Holocaust.
1955: Emmett Till, 14, was kidnapped and lynched by White men in Money, Mississippi. His anguished mother insisted on an open-casket ceremony to show the world the gruesome cruelty of lynching. An all-White jury acquitted the two murder suspects after barely an hour of deliberation; they later confessed to the crime.
1963: The March on Washington took place, drawing about 200,000 peaceful protesters to the nation’s capital to advocate for equal rights for Black Americans. One of the pinnacles of the Civil Rights Movement, the day featured a performance by Mahalia Jackson and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
1986: Tina Turner, the Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll, received her star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. The star is at 1750 Vine St. in front of the Capitol Records tower.
1996: The final divorce decree ended the 15-year marriage of Charles and Diana, prince and princess of Wales. The couple had been separated for four years, and Queen Elizabeth II urged them to make the decision permanent.
2020: Actor Chadwick Boseman died of colon cancer at 43, shocking and saddening fans. His memorable and wide-ranging performances included Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, James Brown and T’Challa, the Black Panther.
– USA TODAY Network
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Today in history, August 28
