Today in history
On Aug. 28, 1609, English navigator Henry Hudson discovered Delaware Bay.
In 1833 England’s Parliament banned slavery in the British empire.
In 1917 10 suffragists were arrested as they picketed outside the White House.
In 1922 radio station WEAF in New York City aired the first radio commercial, a 10-minute ad for a real estate company. The station charged $100.
In1955 Emmett Till, an African-American teenager from Chicago, was abducted from his uncle’s home in Money, Miss., by white men after he supposedly had whistled at a white woman. (His body was found three days later.)
In 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech to 200,000 people at a peaceful civil rights rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
In 1971 Ziggy, the Brookfield Zoo elephant that once tried to kill its trainer, was allowed outdoors for the first time in 30 years.
In 1976 scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported they had created an artificial gene, the basic unit of heredity.
In 1981 John Hinckley Jr. pleaded not guilty to charges he had tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan five months earlier. (Hinckley would be acquitted by reason of insanity.)
In 1983 citing personal reasons, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin announced he would resign.
In 1988 70 people were killed when three Italian stunt planes collided during an air show at the U.S. air base in Ramstein, West Germany, sending flaming debris into the crowd of spectators.
In1990 a tornado cut a 16-mile-long swath through Will County, killing 29 people, injuring 354 and causing $160 million damage, mostly in Plainfield, Crest Hill and Joliet.
In 1992 the federal government launched two massive relief operations, rushing food and drinking water to hurricane-ravaged Florida while cargo planes landed in Somalia with tons of food for African famine victims.
In 1996 the troubled 15-year marriage of Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana ended officially with the issuance of a divorce decree.
In 2001 Gateway, the nation’s No. 4 manufacturer of personal computers, said it was laying off 4,700 employees — 25 percent of its global workforce — because of an increasingly bleak market.
In 2005 New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered everyone in the city to evacuate after Hurricane Katrina grew into a monster storm.
In 2008 Illinois Sen. Barack Obama became the first African-American to receive his party’s nomination for president, when he was officially confirmed at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
In 2012 Republican Mitt Romney became the first Mormon to be nominated for president by either major political party.
In 2013 President Barack Obama and former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton marked the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have and Dream” speech and 1963 march at the Lincoln Memorial. Tens of thousands attended events on the National Mall.