On June 28, 1577, Flemish baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens was born in Germany.
In 1778 Mary Ludwig Hays became a heroine of the Revolutionary War when, as Molly Pitcher, she carried water to American soldiers at the Battle of Monmouth, N.J.
In 1836 James Madison, the fourth president, died at age 85.
In 1838 Britain’s Queen Victoria was crowned.
In 1894 Congress made Labor Day a federal holiday, designating the first Monday in September for observance.
In 1919 the Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I, was signed in France.
In 1926 actor-director Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, N.Y.
In 1944 the Republican national convention in Chicago nominated New York Gov. Thomas Dewey for president.
In 1950 North Korean forces captured Seoul.
In 1951 a TV version of the radio program “Amos ‘N’ Andy” premiered on CBS. (Though criticized for racial stereotyping, it was the first network television series to feature an all-black cast.)
In 1966 actor John Cusack was born in Evanston.
In 1967 Israel declared Jerusalem reunified under its sovereignty after its capture of the Arab sector in the Six-Day War.
In 1969 patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City, clashed with police in an incident considered to have birthed the gay-rights movement (this item has been added to this text).
In 1978 the Supreme Court ordered the University of California, Davis, Medical School to admit Allan Bakke, a white man who alleged he was a victim of reverse racial discrimination.
In 1994 President Bill Clinton became the first chief executive to set up a personal legal defense fund and ask Americans to contribute to it.
In 1995 Webster Hubbell, the former No. 3 official at the Justice Department, was sentenced to 21 months in prison for bilking clients of the law firm where he and Hillary Rodham Clinton had been partners.
In 1996 The Citadel voted to admit women, ending a 153-year-old men-only policy at the South Carolina military school.
In 1997 Mike Tyson was disqualified for biting Evander Holyfield’s ear during their WBA heavyweight title fight in Las Vegas.
In 2000, seven months after he was cast adrift in the Florida Straits, Elian Gonzalez was returned to his native Cuba. Also, the Supreme Court ruled the Boy Scouts can bar homosexuals from serving as troop leaders.
In 2001 former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic was handed over by Serbia to the UN war crimes tribunal.
In 2004 the U.S.-led coalition governing Iraq transferred sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government.
