28 August 1609

Henry Hudson discovers Delaware Bay.

On Aug. 28, 1609, English navigator Henry Hudson discovered Delaware Bay.
In 1749 German poet, dramatist and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born in Frankfurt, Germany.
In 1917 10 suffragists were arrested as they picketed outside the White House.
In 1925 actor-dancer Donald O’Connor was born in Chicago.
In 1928 an all-party conference in Lucknow, India, voted for dominion status within the British empire.

In 1963 Rev. 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 1968 Vice President Hubert Humphrey was nominated for president on the first ballot at the stormy Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

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 1979 Judge Louis Garippo ruled that John Wayne Gacy would face charges in a single trial that he murdered 33 boys and young men in Chicago. He would be found guilty.

In 1983, citing personal reasons, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin announced he would resign. He did so on Sept. 15.

In 1985 actress Ruth Gordon, 88, died in her home in Edgartown, Mass.

In 1990 a tornado cut a 16-mile swath through Will County, killing 29 people, injuring 354 and causing $160 million in damage.

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 1995, as the Balkans war raged on, a Serbian rocket struck a crowded market in downtown Sarajevo, killing 37 civilians.

In 1996 President Clinton was nominated for a second term by delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago’s United Center. Also in 1996 the troubled 15-year marriage of Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana officially ended with the issuance of a divorce decree.