Today in History: June 28, Franz Ferdinand assassinated

Today is Saturday, June 28, the 179th day of 2025. There are 186 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On June 28, 1914, in an act that sparked World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, were shot to death in Sarajevo by Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip.

Also on this date:

In 1863, during the Civil War, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln appointed Maj. Gen. George G. Meade as the new commander of the Army of the Potomac, following the resignation of Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker.

In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in France, ending the First World War.

In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Alien Registration Act, also known as the Smith Act, which required adult foreigners residing in the U.S. to be registered and fingerprinted.

In 1969, riots broke out following a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, an LGBTQ+ bar in New York's Greenwich Village neighborhood, leading to six days of violent protests that served as a watershed moment in the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

In 1997, boxer Mike Tyson was disqualified from his rematch with heavyweight titleholder Evander Holyfield after Tyson bit Holyfield twice in the third round, including biting off a portion of Holyfield's right ear.

In 2000, seven months after he was found adrift in the Straits of Florida, Elian Gonzalez was returned to his native Cuba.

In 2017, a man armed with a shotgun attacked the offices of The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, killing four journalists and a staffer before police stormed the building and arrested him; authorities said Jarrod Ramos had a long-running grudge against the newspaper for its reporting of a harassment case against him. (Ramos would be convicted and sentenced to six life sentences plus 345 years in prison.)

In 2019, avowed white supremacist James Alex Fields, who deliberately drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing a young woman and injuring dozens, apologized for his actions before being sentenced to life in prison on federal hate crime charges.

In 2022, Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison for helping the wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls.

Today's Birthdays: Filmmaker-comedian Mel Brooks is 99. Diplomat and politician Hans Blix is 97. Actor Bruce Davison is 79. Actor Kathy Bates is 77. Football Hall of Famer John Elway is 65. Actor John Cusack is 59. Actor Mary Stuart Masterson is 59. Actor Tichina Arnold is 56. Filmmaker-actor Mike White is 55. Business executive Elon Musk is 54. Actor Alessandro Nivola is 53. Country singer-TV personality Kellie Pickler is 38. Olympic track gold medalist Elaine Thompson-Herah is 33.