Claiming his right to the English throne, William, duke of Normandy, invades England at Pevensey on Britain’s southeast coast. His subsequent defeat of King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings marked the beginning of a new era in British history.

On September 28, 1781, General George Washington, commanding a force of 17,000 French and Continental troops, begins the siege known as the Battle of Yorktown against British General Lord Charles Cornwallis and a contingent of 9,000 British troops at Yorktown, Virginia, in the most important battle of the Revolutionary War.

On September 28, 1918, in an incident that would go down in the lore of World War I history—although the details of the event are still unclear—Private Henry Tandey, a British soldier serving near the French village of Marcoing, reportedly encounters a wounded German soldier and declines to shoot him, sparing the life of 29-year-old Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler.

On September 28, 1918, a Liberty Loan parade in Philadelphia prompts a huge outbreak of Spanish flu in the city. By the time the pandemic ended, an estimated 20 million to 50 million people were dead worldwide.

On September 28, 1941, the last day of Major League Baseball's regular season, the Boston Red Sox’s Ted Williams gets six hits in eight at-bats during a doubleheader in Philadelphia, boosting his average to .406. He becomes the first player since 1930 to hit .400. "I guess I'll be satisfied with that thrill out there today," he tells the Boston Globe about hitting .400. "... I never wanted anything harder in my life."

On September 28, 1965, six years after he led the Cuban Revolution and four years after the failed U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs Invasion, Fidel Castro announces that any Cuban who wished to leave the island was free to do so. With Cuban forces no longer blocking civilians from leaving, a massive wave of emigration ensued, bringing hundreds of thousands of Cuban immigrants to Florida.

Roch Theriault fatally wounds Solange Boilard in Ontario, Canada. Theriault, the leader of the most bizarre and violent cult in Canadian history, often physically abused his followers. Obsessed with anatomy and medicine, Theriault performed crude intestinal surgery on Boislard by slicing open her abdomen and ripping out a piece of intestine with his bare hands. He then ordered another follower to stitch up the wound with a needle and thread. When she died the next day in agonizing pain, he sawed off the top of her head, and then sexually assaulted her. Before burying the woman, he removed a rib, which he wore around his neck.

On September 28, 2018, the cargo ship Venta Maersk docks in St. Petersburg, Russia, more than a month after departing from Vladivostok on the other side of the country. The successful traversal of the Russian Arctic was a landmark moment for the international shipping industry, as well as a sobering reminder of the extent to which the Earth's ice caps had melted.