April 28 in History

The Austrian Netherlands were the territory of the Burgundian Circle of the Holy Roman Empire between 1714 and 1797. The period began with the acquisition by the Austrian Habsburg monarchy of the former Spanish Netherlands under the Treaty of Rastatt in 1714. It lasted until Revolutionary France annexed the territory after the Battle of Sprimont in 1794 and the Peace of Basel in 1795. Austria relinquished its claim on the province in 1797 through the Treaty of Campo Formio.

The Treaty of Paris of 15 May 1796 was a treaty between the French Republic and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia during the War of the First Coalition.

The Pomona was a fast packet clipper ship constructed in 1856 for Howland and Frothingham. She operated for just over two and a half years transporting emigrants and cargo from Liverpool, England to New York City. Pomona sank in the early morning of April 28, 1859 after a navigation error caused the ship to strike the coast of Ireland at County Wexford. 424 of the 448 people on board died.

Henry McCarty, alias William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid, was an American outlaw and gunfighter of the Old West who was linked to nine murders. He was solely responsible for four of them, and he may have played a role in five, alongside other men. He is also noted for his involvement in New Mexico's Lincoln County War.

Isidore Auguste Marie Louis Paulhan, was a French aviator. He is known for winning the first Daily Mail aviation prize for the first flight between London and Manchester in 1910.

The original Wembley Stadium, ; originally known as the Empire Stadium, was a football stadium in Wembley, London, England, best known for hosting important football matches. It stood on the same site now occupied by its successor.

South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. Its nine provinces are bounded to the south by 2,798 kilometres of coastline that stretches along the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean; to the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe; to the east and northeast by Mozambique and Eswatini; and it encloses Lesotho. Covering an area of 1,221,037 square kilometres, the country has a population of over 63 million people, making it the sixth-most populated country in Africa. Pretoria is the administrative capital, while Cape Town, as the seat of Parliament, is the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein is regarded as the judicial capital. The largest and most populous city is Johannesburg, followed by Cape Town and Durban.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, the latter enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the only nuclear weapons used in war. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 60 to 75 million people. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides, including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

The Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered around six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, approximately two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were committed primarily through mass shootings across Eastern Europe and poison gas chambers in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chełmno and Majdanek death camps in occupied Poland. Concurrent Nazi persecutions killed millions of other non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term Holocaust is sometimes used to include the murder and persecution of non-Jewish groups, such as the Romani and Soviet POWs.

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian composer and conductor with French and American citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music.

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. A General of the Army, Eisenhower was the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. His successful leadership in Operation Torch (1942–1943) and Operation Overlord was pivotal to the Allied victory in World War II.

The Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty, formally the Treaty of Peace between the Republic of China and Japan and commonly known as the Treaty of Taipei, was a peace treaty between Japan and the Republic of China (ROC) signed in Taipei, Taiwan on 28 April 1952, and took effect on August 5 the same year, marking the formal end of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945).

The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina wars and a proxy war of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and US. The Vietnam War was one of the postcolonial wars of national liberation, a theater in the Cold War, and a civil war, with civil warfare a defining feature from the outset. Direct US military involvement escalated from 1965 until US forces were withdrawn in 1973. The fighting spilled into the Laotian and Cambodian civil wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.

The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina wars and a proxy war of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and US. The Vietnam War was one of the postcolonial wars of national liberation, a theater in the Cold War, and a civil war, with civil warfare a defining feature from the outset. Direct US military involvement escalated from 1965 until US forces were withdrawn in 1973. The fighting spilled into the Laotian and Cambodian civil wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.

Cao Văn Viên was a four-star army general in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. He rose to the position of Chairman of the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff. Considered one of "the most gifted" of South Vietnam's military leaders, he was previously called an "absolute key figure" and one of "the most important Vietnamese military leaders" in the U.S.-led fighting during the Vietnam War. Along with Trần Thiện Khiêm he was one of only two four-star generals in the entire history of South Vietnam.

The President of Afghanistan was constitutionally the head of state and head of government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and Commander-in-Chief of the Afghan Armed Forces.

On 26 April 1986, reactor no. 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located near Pripyat, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union, exploded. With dozens of direct casualties and thousands of health complications stemming from the disaster, it is one of only two nuclear accidents rated at the maximum severity on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. The response involved more than 500,000 personnel and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles. It remains the worst nuclear disaster and the most expensive disaster in history, with an estimated cost of US$700 billion.

Space Shuttle Discovery is a retired American Space Shuttle orbiter. The spaceplane was one of the orbiters from NASA's Space Shuttle program and the third of five fully operational orbiters to be built. Its first mission, STS-41-D, flew from August 30 to September 5, 1984. Over 27 years of service it launched and landed 39 times, aggregating more spaceflights than any other spacecraft as of December 2024. The Space Shuttle launch vehicle had three main components: the Space Shuttle orbiter, a single-use central fuel tank, and two reusable solid rocket boosters. Nearly 25,000 heat-resistant tiles cover the orbiter to protect it from high temperatures on re-entry.

The Port Arthur massacre was a mass shooting that occurred on 28 April 1996 at Port Arthur, a tourist town in the Australian state of Tasmania. The perpetrator, Martin Bryant, killed 35 people and wounded 23 others, in the deadliest massacre in modern Australian history. The attack led to fundamental changes in Australia's gun laws.