This Day in History – June 28
Today is the 179th day of 2021. There are 186 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2000: Seven months after floating adrift in the Florida straits, six-year-old Elian Gonzalez returns to his native Cuba, bringing to a close a fierce custody battle.
OTHER EVENTS
1389: Serb army is defeated by the Turks at Kosovo Polje. Remainder of Serbia is conquered by Turks, who rule for almost 500 years.
1812: Napoleon Bonaparte’s army crosses Vilna River as Russian forces retreat.
1881: Immigration Act of New Zealand restricts Japanese immigration.
1914: Austria’s Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife are assassinated at Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, Serb revolutionary, igniting World War I.
1919: Germany and the Allies sign the Treaty of Versailles, formally ending World War I and providing for the creation of the League of Nations
1942: British 8th Army in North Africa retreats from Germans to El Alamein; German forces launch counter-attack against Soviets in Kharkov region.
1948: Yugoslavia is expelled from Communist group Cominform for hostility to Soviet Union.
1950: North Korean soldiers capture Seoul, as South Koreans retreat south of Han River.
1956: Labour riots are put down in Poznan, Poland, with many casualties.
1976: The Seychelles, an Indian Ocean island group, become independent after 102 years under British rule.
1986: West European leaders, meeting in the Netherlands, delay indefinitely imposing economic sanctions against South Africa.
1988: US military attache to Greece is killed by powerful car bomb that blows his armour-plated car off road.
1989: In Slobodan Milosevic’s shining moment, one million Serbs gather in Kosovo, Yugoslavia, to mark the 600th anniversary of their defeat by the Turks and cheer their nationalist leader.
1991: Yugoslav army declares a ceasefire after nearly two days of fighting to keep Slovenia from seceding.
1993: Thousands of illegal Albanian immigrants in Greece are rounded up and sent home in bus convoys as police crack down following Albania’s expulsion of a Greek Orthodox priest.
1994: Three masked gunmen seize a bus and take about 40 passengers hostage near the southern Russian city of Mineralnye Vody.
1996: Turkey’s President Suleyman Demirel approves the country’s first Islamic-led Government in 73 years.
1997: Cuban and Argentine forensic experts uncover the remains of legendary guerrilla leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara and five of his companions near the Bolivian town of Vallegrande.
1999: Computer hackers deface the US Army’s main website after having hacked into the White House, FBI, and US Senate websites.
2001: Yugoslavia hands over former President Slobodan Milosevic to the UN war crimes tribunal.
2004: The United States hands over sovereignty to the Iraqis two days ahead of schedule and seven months before elections are set to take place.
2006: UN member states lift a US$950-million (euro 756 million) spending cap on the United Nations budget, averting a financial crisis but dealing a blow to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s reform agenda.
2007: Israeli President Moshe Katsav agrees to resign in a plea bargain that drops rape allegations and the threat of jail time in return for pleading guilty to lesser charges.
2009: Soldiers oust the democratically elected president of Honduras and Congress names a successor, but Manuel Zalaya, the leftist ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, denounces what he calls an illegal coup and vows to stay in power.
2011: German and Chinese leaders pledge a big increase in trade between their countries, the biggest economies of Europe and Asia, while China’s premier underlines his support for the eurozone amid its debt crisis.
2012: Archeologists say pottery fragments found in a south China cave have been confirmed to be 20,000 years old, making them the oldest pottery in the world.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
England’s King Henry VIII (1491-1547); Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish painter (1577-1640); Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French philosopher-author (1712-1778); Luigi Pirandello, Italian dramatist and Nobel laureate (1867-1936); Richard Rodgers, US composer (1902-1979); Mel Brooks, US actor/director (1926- ); Pat Morita, US actor (1932-2005); Kathy Bates, actress (1948- ); John Cusack, actor (1966- )
— AP