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Battle of Yorktown / Spanish Flu / Norman Conquest

On This Day (September 28): Your quick daily trip back in time.

Author

Fatih Taskiran
September 28, 2025

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🌟 Editor's Note

Good morning — it's Sunday, September 28. Today, we will explore the start of the Norman Conquest, the Siege of Yorktown, the Cuban exodus after the revolution, and more — quick, sharp, and source-clean.

Oh, and don't miss our legendary Strange Times story about an incredible missed shot, which will blow your mind.

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Correction: September 26th issue incorrectly listed the years for West Side Story (1957) and Abbey Road (1969). Thanks to our dear readers, Al and Tim, for their keen eyes!

— Fatih Taskiran, Editor

🚀 Time Machine

-48 BC

Pompey was killed when he landed in Egypt on orders from King Ptolemy of Egypt.

-935

Saint Wenceslas was murdered by his brother, Boleslaus I of Bohemia.

-1066

William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, landed at Pevensey Bay in Sussex, starting the Norman Conquest.

-1542

The Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo arrived in San Diego Bay while searching for the mythical Strait of Anián.

-1781

The Siege of Yorktown began with 9,000 American and 7,000 French troops.

-1887

One of the deadliest natural disasters in history, the Yellow River floods in China killed up to 2 million people.

-1918

Philadelphia experiences a huge outbreak of Spanish flu after a Liberty Loans Parade. Globally, 20 million to 50 million people died by the end of the pandemic.

-1939

Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov signed the German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, which redraws the German and Soviet spheres of influence in Central Europe.

-1965

Six years after the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro announced that any Cuban could leave the island.

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📸 Snapshot

Nine kings* in one photo: just four years later, they were enemies at war, 1910

Standing, from left to right: King Haakon VII of Norway, Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria, King Manuel II of Portugal and the Algarve, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Prussia, King George I of Greece, and King Albert I of Belgium.

Seated, from left to right: King Alfonso XIII of Spain, King George V of the United Kingdom, and King Frederick VIII of Denmark.

🗨️ Final Words

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🤯 Strange Times

The Missed Shot: One Battlefield Mercy, Endless Timelines

On September 28, 1918, Private Henry Tandey (later 5th Duke of Wellington), fresh from the British push that took Marcoing, raises his rifle at a retreating, wounded German. He lowers it. "I couldn't shoot a wounded man," he later recalled. The German nods and limps on.

Legend has it that the soldier was a 29-year-old Adolf Hitler. A decade later, Hitler showed Neville Chamberlain a copy of a painting of Tandey and said, "That's the man who almost shot me." The event is debated, but the question remains: if Tandey had shot, how many pages of the 20th century would get rewritten?

🏆 FlashQuiz

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