28 June 1389
Ottoman Sultan Murad I defeats Prince Lazar of Serbia at the battle of Kosovo. Both leaders are killed along with much of the Serbian nobility. Serbia will become a vassal state within the Ottoman empire.
28 June 1461
Three months after routing Henry VI’s Lancastrians at the battle of Towton, Yorkist Edward IV was crowned king in Westminster.
28 June 1712
Birth in Geneva of philosopher and composer Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His mother died a few days after his birth. Emile, his treatise on the philosophy of education, and political writings like his Discourse on Equality and The Social Contract, made Rousseau one of the most influential writers of the 18th-century Enlightenment, and his ideas were espoused by the leaders of the French revolution. Sixteen years after his sudden death at Ermenonville, Oise, in July 1778 his remains were transferred to the Pantheon in Paris.
28 June 1838
Four hundred thousand people lined London’s streets to watch the coronation procession of Queen Victoria who was crowned that day in Westminster Abbey.
28 June 1846
Having devised instruments such as the saxhorn and the saxotromba, Belgian inventor Adolphe Sax hits the jackpot with his patent for a single-reed instrument made of brass. Once again he names it after himself – the saxophone.
28 June 1880
Australian bushranger Edward ‘Ned’ Kelly was captured after a shoot-out with police at Glenrowen in Victoria. His three associates were killed in the incident and Kelly was hanged in Melbourne Gaol that November.