| 28 July 1398 | France [political events] | King Charles VI of France announces his country's withdrawal from obedience to Pope Benedict XIII of Avignon. King Henry III of Castile and León does likewise. |
| 28 July 1536 | Denmark-Norway [wars] | Count Christopher von Oldenburg, the mercenary general of Lübeck, surrenders Copenhagen to the forces of the Lutheran Christian III after a long siege; this ends the Danish civil war known as the ‘Count's War’. |
| 28 July 1540 | England [political events] | King Henry VIII of England marries his young mistress, Catherine Howard, while his minister Thomas Cromwell, earl of Essex, is being executed elsewhere for having arranged his previous (fourth) marriage, to Anne of Cleves. The Lord Treasurer, Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, who is Catherine's uncle, becomes his principal minister. |
| 28 July 1655 | France [births and deaths] | Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, French satirist and dramatist, the subject of many romantic legends, whose best-known works include Histoire comique des états et empires de la lune/Comic History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1656), dies in Paris, France (36). |
| 28 July 1741 | Italy [births and deaths] | Antonio Vivaldi, important Italian composer during the baroque period, dies in Vienna (now in Austria) (63). |
| 28 July 1742 | Austria, Prussia, Silesia, Holy Roman Empire, Moravia, Bohemia, Poland, Habsburg Monarchy, Germany [War of the Austrian Succession (1740–46)] | The Peace of Berlin between Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria and King Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia ends the First Silesian War. The treaty confirms the provisions of the preliminary Peace of Breslau: Austria cedes to Prussia the duchy of Glatz, previously part of the Bohemian patrimony, the Moravian (formerly Jägerndorf) enclave of Katscher and, most notably, the greater part of the duchy of Silesia (with the exception of the principality of Teschen, the lordship of Hennersdorf, part of Jägerndorf, and the town of Troppau). Prussia takes over the Silesian debt to Great Britain and the United Netherlands and, in the War of the Austrian Succession, Prussia and Poland withdraw from the coalition against Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria. |
| 28 July 1750 | Germany [births and deaths] | Johann Sebastian Bach, leading German composer of the baroque period, dies in Leipzig (now Germany) (65). |
| 28 July 1794 | France [French Revolution] | In France, a conspiracy by Montagnard moderates and Dantonists against the leader of the Committee of Public Safety, Maximilien Robespierre, succeeds in abolishing the Commune de Paris (municipal government). Robespierre and Louis St-Just are executed. |
| 28 July 1794 | France [births and deaths] | Maximilien François Robespierre, French Jacobin leader during the French Revolution, is guillotined in Paris, France (36). |
| 28 July 1809 | UK, France, Spain [Napoleonic Wars (1803–15)] | The British soldier and statesman Arthur Wellesley is victorious at the Battle of Talavera in Spain over the French who afterwards fall back to Madrid. Wellesley is subsequently created Duke of Wellington. |
| 28 July 1914 | Austria-Hungary, Serbia [World War I (1914–18)] | Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia. |
| 28 July 1920 | Czechoslovakia, Poland, France [diplomacy] | The Teschen Agreement, which divides the territory disputed between Czechoslovakia and Poland, is signed in Paris, France. |
| 28 July 1926 | Belgium [political events] | Following a Belgian financial crisis the Belgian franc is devalued and King Albert I is given dictatorial powers for six months. |
| 28 July 1944 | USSR, Poland, Germany [World War II (1939–45)] | Armies of the Soviet 1st Belorussian Front recapture the city of Brest-Litovsk (now Brest), on the Polish-Soviet border, concluding Operation Bagration. The huge Soviet offensive has virtually destroyed German field marshal Ernst Busch's Army Group Centre. |
| 28 July 1959 | UK [postal services] | The General Post Office introduces post codes and automatic sorting machines in Britain. |
| 28 July 1976 | China [natural disasters] | An earthquake in Tangshan, China, measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale levels nearly every building and kills 242,000 people. It is the worst earthquake in modern history. |
| 28 July 1984 | USA [Olympic Games] | The 23rd Olympic Games open in Los Angeles, California, and are boycotted by the Soviet bloc, with the exception of Romania, and by Iran and Libya, in retaliation for the US boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980. The People's Republic of China, however, competes for the first time. |
