August 28 birthdays & history

Famous people born on August 28

• 1749Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German novelist, poet, playwright, and diplomat
• 1965Shania Twain, Grammy Award-winning Canadian Country Singer-Songwriter
• 1957Ivo Josipović, Croatian lawyer, jurist, and politician, 3rd President of Croatia
• 1962David Fincher, American director and producer
• 1989César Azpilicueta, Spanish footballer
• 1957Ai Weiwei, Chinese contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist
• 1917Jack Kirby, Comic Book Artist and Writer
• 1989Valtteri Bottas, Finnish race car driver
• 1982Thiago Motta, Brazilian-Italian footballer
• 1990Bojan Krkić, Spanish footballer

What happened on August 28

• 475Orestes took control of Ravenna, the capital of the Western Roman Empire, forcing Emperor Julius Nepos to flee.
• 1619Ferdinand II, King of Bohemia and Hungary, was unanimously elected Holy Roman Emperor.
• 1789With the first use of his 1.2-metre (3.9 ft) telescope, then the largest in the world, William Herschel discovered a new moon of Saturn, later named Enceladus.
• 1830Tom Thumb, the first American-built steam locomotive, took part in an impromptu race against a horse-drawn car in Maryland.
• 1845The first issue of Scientific American magazine is published.
• 1850Richard Wagner's Lohengrin premieres at the Staatskapelle Weimar.
• 1867The United States takes possession of the (at this point unoccupied) Midway Atoll.
• 1898Caleb Bradham's beverage "Brad's Drink" is renamed "Pepsi-Cola".
• 1950American tennis player Althea Gibson became the first African-American woman to compete at the U.S. National Championships.
• 1987Construction began on the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, the tallest building in North Korea.
• 1993The NASA spacecraft Galileo flew by the asteroid 243 Ida and took photographs that later revealed the first known asteroid moon.
• 2021The second phase of the Thomson-East Coast MRT line was opened for service.

Also observed on August 28

• National Grandparents Day (Mexico)