| 28 August 876 | Carolingian Empire [political events] | The East Frankish king Louis the German dies. His lands are divided between his sons Carloman (Bavaria and the East March), Louis the Younger (Saxony and Franconia), and Charles the Fat (Alemannia). |
| 28 August 1278 | Bohemia, Holy Roman Empire, Germany, Hungary [wars] | King Ottokar II of Bohemia is defeated and killed by King Rudolf I of Germany and King Ladislas IV of Hungary at Dürnkrut, on the River Danube near Stillfried. He is succeeded by his seven-year-old son, Wenceslas III, in Bohemia only, where civil war breaks out. |
| 28 August 1648 | UK [British Civil Wars (1642–51)] | After a siege that started on 14 June, parliamentarian forces under General Thomas Fairfax take the town of Colchester, Essex, England, from its Royalist governor Charles Lucas, together with 4,000 troops. The surrender marks the end of the second Civil War in Essex and southeast England. |
| 28 August 1749 | Germany [births and deaths] | Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German poet, novelist, dramatist, and philosopher, born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany (–1832). |
| 28 August 1859 | USA [natural resources] | US engineer Edwin Drake drills the world's first oil well, at Titusville, Pennsylvania. Drilled to a depth of 21 m/69 ft, it produces 1,818 l/400 gal per day. His success, coinciding with a growing demand for oil products, especially kerosene, leads to further drilling. |
| 28 August 1910 | Montenegro [political events] | Montenegro is proclaimed a kingdom independent of the Ottoman Empire under Nicholas I. |
| 28 August 1958 | USA [births and deaths] | Michael Jackson, US rock singer, born in Gary, Indiana. |
| 28 August 1963 | USA [civil rights] | Over 200,000 Americans take part in the March on Washington, a peaceful demonstration for civil rights in Washington, DC. They are addressed by the civil-rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr, who proclaims, with the Lincoln Memorial as a backdrop, ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character’. |
| 28 August 1976 | USA [chemistry] | Indian-born US biochemist Har Gobind Khorana and his colleagues announce the construction of the first artificial gene to function naturally when inserted into a bacterial cell. |
| 28 August 1983 | Israel [political events] | The Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin announces his intention to resign. He is succeeded on 15 September by Yitzhak Shamir. |
| 28 August 1992 | USA [natural disasters] | Typhoon Omar strikes Guam, a US territory in the Pacific, damaging about one-eighth of the island's 32,000 homes. |
| 28 August 1995 | Bosnia-Herzegovina [wars] | Serb troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina bombard Sarajevo market place, killing 37 people. |
