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Made for the 250thOn this day › June 28
What happened on June 28 in American history
June 28 is the 179th day of the year (the 180th in leap years). Patriot Compass has published 16 stories from June 28 spanning 1745 to 2012. Among them: in 1745, Pepperrell's colonials take Louisbourg; Du Chambon surrenders after 47 days of siege; and in 1776, Parker's nine warships bombard Fort Sullivan; Moultrie's palmetto walls swallow the cannonballs.
1745Member story · 1776 Club
Pepperrell's colonials take Louisbourg; Du Chambon surrenders after 47 days of siege
Four thousand New England volunteers with no British regulars have cracked the "American Dunkirk," the stone fortress France spent thirty million livres to make impregnable.
1776
Parker's nine warships bombard Fort Sullivan; Moultrie's palmetto walls swallow the cannonballs
Clinton's land assault stalls at an unwadeable channel, one British ship sits grounded on a sandbar, and the fleet withdraws up the coast.
1776
Washington's own bodyguard hangs before 20,000 in New York
Thomas Hickey, an Irish-born private in the Life Guards, was caught passing counterfeit money, then talked too freely in prison about a far larger plot against the Commander-in-Chief.
1778Member story · 1776 Club
Washington steadies a crumbling vanguard at Monmouth; Clinton slips away in the dark
Six months out of Valley Forge, the Continental Army holds Perrine's Hill through a brutal heat wave and leaves the British with nothing to show for the march to New York.
1855Member story · 1776 Club
Seven men walk out of Delta Kappa Epsilon and found a fraternity of their own in Oxford, Ohio
The break traces back to a vote over a poet's chair; the new society, Sigma Phi, holds its first meeting this afternoon at Miami University.
1865
Meade stands down the Army of the Potomac; it ceases to exist, two years to the day after he took command
The army that bled at Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness is disbanded before summer is out.
1870Member story · 1776 Club
Congress gives federal workers four official holidays; Christmas was never guaranteed before today
The law covers only District of Columbia employees, not the country at large, but it names New Year's Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas as protected days off.
1894Member story · 1776 Club
Cleveland signs Labor Day into law; September beats out May, and the reason is deliberate
Thirty states already marked the day; the federal act sets the first Monday of September, keeping clear distance from Haymarket and the socialist calendar.
1895Member story · 1776 Club
Court voids James Reavis's claim to 18,600 square miles of Arizona and New Mexico
The Court of Private Land Claims rules his Spanish grant "wholly fictitious and fraudulent," collapsing a scheme that had collected millions from settlers who feared eviction.
1902Member story · 1776 Club
Congress buys France's failed canal for $40 million; Roosevelt is expected to sign tomorrow
The Spooner Act authorizes purchase of the Compagnie Nouvelle's rusting assets, down from a $110 million ask, contingent on securing a treaty with Colombia.
1914Member story · 1776 Club
Princip shoots the Archduke and his wife; both die within the hour in Sarajevo
Franz Ferdinand and Sophie survived a grenade attack earlier this morning before their car stalled near the Latin Bridge, where a Young Bosnia nationalist stepped forward with a pistol.
1919Member story · 1776 Club
Germany signs the Versailles treaty in the Hall of Mirrors; its delegates call it a Diktat
The same room where the German Empire was proclaimed after defeating France in 1871 is the site chosen to close the war, as Berlin signs terms it had no hand in writing.
1969Member story · 1776 Club
Crowd of 600 traps police inside the Stonewall Inn; Christopher Street will not clear until dawn
Inspector Pine led eight officers in at 1:20 a.m. to raid the Genovese-run club; a handcuffed woman shoved out the door is what breaks the night open.
1978Member story · 1776 Club
Court strikes UC Davis quota, admits Bakke; race may still factor in admissions
Nine justices, six opinions: the 16-seat reserved program is void, but no majority forms to bar race as one factor among many in college selection.
2004Member story · 1776 Club
Bremer hands sovereignty to Iraq two days early; the CPA dissolves before breakfast
The date was moved forward to outpace insurgent attacks; Allawi and al-Yawer now govern a country in open insurgency.
2012Member story · 1776 Club
Roberts sides with liberals; the ACA's individual mandate stands, recast as a tax
The same 5-4 ruling hands opponents a partial win: states may refuse the Medicaid expansion without forfeiting their existing federal funding.
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