On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are shot to death by a Bosnian Serb nationalist during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. The killings sparked a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I by early August.
On June 28, 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Alien Registration Act, also known as the Smith Act, which required adult foreigners residing in the U.S. to be registered and fingerprinted.
In 1950, North Korean forces captured Seoul, the capital of South Korea.
In 1951, a TV version of the radio comedy program “Amos ‘N’ Andy” premiered on CBS. (It was the first network TV series to feature an all-Black cast, but came under criticism for racial stereotyping.)
In 1964, civil rights activist Malcolm X declared, “We want equality by any means necessary” during the Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity in New York.
In 1969, in what is now regarded by many as history’s first major protest on behalf of equal rights for LGBTQ people, a police raid of the Stonewall Inn—a popular gay club located on New York City’s Christopher Street—turns violent as patrons and local sympathizers begin rioting against the authorities.
In 1978, the Supreme Court ordered the University of California-Davis Medical School to admit Allan Bakke, a white man who argued he’d been a victim of reverse racial discrimination.