Tornadoes kill 26 near Chicago
1990 - Tornadoes killed at least 26 people near Chicago, including children plucked from a block of flats and hurled to their deaths in a cornfield. More than 280 people were injured, some critically. Rescue workers dug into rubble during the night, looking for more victims. Dozens of homes were destroyed in Tuesday’s storm, the worst to hit the area since 1967 when a tornado killed 32 people. The Will County coroner’s office said at least 26 people died, 10 of them in Crest Hill, a village where the top two floors of a line of low-income, three-storey flats were ripped away by the storm. Some of the dead from the flats, mostly children, were found in an adjacent cornfield. A helicopter using searchlights hovered over the field, looking for more victims.
August 28
1879 - British troops capture Cetywayo in Zulu War.
1910 - Montenegro is proclaimed an independent kingdom under Nicholas I.
1914 - Austria-Hungary declares war on Belgium.
1916 - Italy declares war against Germany during First World War.
1922 - First radio commercial is aired in New York.
1928 - All-Party Congress at Lucknow, India, votes for dominion status within the British Empire.
1963 - 200,000 people participate in a civil rights rally in Washington, where Dr Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I have a dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
1966 - About 50,000 people die from a drought-caused famine on the island of Lombok, east of Bali.
1973 - More than 600 are killed as quake flattens central Mexico.
1988 - Three Italian stunt planes collide during an air show in Ramstein, West Germany killing 70.
1989 - Kuwaiti Emir Shaikh Jaber Al Ahmad Al Sabah makes his first visit to Egypt since becoming the head of state in 1977.
1993 - Former deputy prime minister Ong Teng Cheong becomes Singapore’s first elected President.
1996 - Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana divorce after 15 years of marriage.
2004 - Hicham Al Guerrouj becomes the first man in 80 years to win both the 1,500-metre and 5,000-metre races in one Olympics.
2007 - Abdullah Gul is sworn in as President of Turkey.
2008 - Barack Obama accepts the US Democratic presidential nomination with a speech at Invesco Field in Denver.
2014 - Recep Tayyip Erdogan is sworn in as 12th President of Turkey.
