On Aug. 28, 1609, English navigator Henry Hudson discovered Delaware Bay.
In 1833 England’s Parliament banned slavery in the British empire.
In 1955 Emmett Till, an African-American teen from Chicago, was abducted from his uncle’s home in Money, Miss., by white men after he supposedly had whistled at a white woman. (His body was found three days later.)
In 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech to 200,000 people at a peaceful civil rights rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
In 1979 Judge Louis Garippo ruled that John Wayne Gacy would face charges in a single trial that he murdered 33 boys and young men in Chicago. (He would be found guilty.)
In 1990 a tornado cut a 16-mile-long swath through Will County, killing 29 people, injuring 354 and causing $160 million in damage, mostly in Plainfield, Crest Hill and Joliet.
In 2005 New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered everyone in the city to evacuate after Hurricane Katrina grew into a monster storm.
In 2008 Illinois Sen. Barack Obama became the first African-American to receive his party’s nomination for president when he was officially confirmed at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
