28 August 1166

A Sunday in history

Weekday

Sunday

Season

Summer (N. Hemisphere)

Century

12th century

Records

387

  1. 2022

    A mass shooting took place in Phoenix, Arizona, leaving 33 dead and five others injured.

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  2. 2021

    The second phase of the Thomson-East Coast MRT line was opened for service.

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  3. 1993

    The NASA spacecraft Galileo flew by the asteroid 243 Ida and took photographs that later revealed the first known asteroid moon (both pictured).

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  4. 1987

    Construction began on the Ryugyong Hotel (pictured) in Pyongyang, the tallest building in North Korea.

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  5. 1973

    Swedish police used gas bombs to end a seven-day hostage situation in Stockholm; the hostages had bonded with their captors during the incident, leading to the term Stockholm syndrome.

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  6. 1963

    American civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the speech "I Have a Dream" during the March on Washington, calling for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States.

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  7. 1955

    African-American teenager Emmett Till was lynched near Money, Mississippi, for allegedly flirting with a white woman, energizing the nascent American civil rights movement.

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  8. 1950

    American tennis player Althea Gibson became the first African-American woman to compete at the U.S. National Championships.

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  9. 1916

    A confrontation at Blargies prison camp in France led to a charge of mutiny for New Zealand private John Braithwaite, for which he was later executed.

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  10. 1909

    The 1909 Monterrey hurricane dissipated; one of the deadliest Atlantic tropical cyclones on record, it killed an estimated 4,000 people throughout Mexico.

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  11. 1830

    Tom Thumb (replica pictured), the first American-built steam locomotive, took part in an impromptu race against a horse-drawn car in Maryland.

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  12. 1789

    William Herschel discovered Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, during the first use of his new telescope which was then the largest in the world.

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  13. 1640

    Bishops' Wars: Scottish Covenanter forces led by Alexander Leslie defeated the English army near Newburn, England.

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  14. 1619

    Ferdinand II, King of Bohemia and Hungary, was unanimously elected Holy Roman Emperor.

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  15. 1542

    Ottoman–Portuguese conflicts: During the Battle of Wofla, the Portuguese commander Cristóvão da Gama was captured by the Adal Sultanate and executed the next day.

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  16. 475

    Orestes took control of Ravenna, the capital of the Western Roman Empire, forcing Emperor Julius Nepos to flee.

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Photo archive

24 historic images from this day — tap to open the gallery.

What was life like?

Prices, jobs, food, music and everyday routine — the world as it felt to live in.

Sources & fact check

Every claim is traced to primary sources, archives, universities and the press — with an explicit confidence rating. Dossiers are generated once and cached permanently.