2008Nepal votes to end its monarchy and becomes a republic
For almost two and a half centuries Nepal had been ruled by kings of the Shah dynasty, who had united the Himalayan kingdom in the eighteenth century. By the 2000s the monarchy had lost much of its support: a Maoist insurgency had torn the country apart for a decade, and King Gyanendra’s seizure of full power in 2005 provoked mass protests that forced him to hand authority back to parliament.
The peace deal that followed promised an elected assembly to write a new constitution. After elections in April 2008, the Constituent Assembly met for the first time on 28 May and voted to declare Nepal a federal democratic republic. The king was given days to leave the royal palace in Kathmandu, which became a museum, and in July the assembly chose Ram Baran Yadav as the country’s first president.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Nepal, fall of the monarchy ↗
1918Armenia and Azerbaijan declare their independence
The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the collapse of the tsar’s armies on the Caucasus front left the peoples of the South Caucasus to fend for themselves. In April 1918 Georgians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis formed a joint Transcaucasian republic, but their interests pulled in different directions, above all as Ottoman armies advanced from the west, and within weeks the federation broke apart into separate states.
On 28 May 1918, meeting in Tiflis, the Azerbaijani National Council proclaimed the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, often described as the first parliamentary democracy in the Muslim world, and Armenia’s National Council also declared independence, the first Armenian state since the Middle Ages. Both republics were short-lived and were taken over by the Soviet Red Army by the end of 1920, but both countries still mark 28 May as a national holiday.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Government of the Republic of Armenia: Armenian Declaration of Independence ↗
1987A teenage pilot lands a light aircraft beside Red Square
Mathias Rust was a young West German amateur pilot with only around 50 hours of flying experience. On 28 May 1987 he took off from Helsinki in a rented single-engine Cessna 172 and, after switching off his radio, flew some 550 miles across the most heavily guarded airspace in the world towards Moscow. Soviet radar tracked him at times, but the little plane was mistaken for a friendly aircraft and never stopped.
That evening he came down on a bridge beside Red Square, taxied past St Basil’s Cathedral and climbed out to sign autographs for astonished onlookers. Rust said he hoped to build a bridge between East and West. He was sentenced to a Soviet labour camp but freed after about fourteen months, and the embarrassment gave Mikhail Gorbachev the chance to dismiss his defence minister and other senior commanders.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Smithsonian Air & Space: The Notorious Flight of Mathias Rust ↗
1975Fifteen West African nations found ECOWAS in Lagos
In the years after independence, the countries of West Africa were small economies with borders drawn by colonial powers and few trading links with one another. Leaders such as Nigeria’s Yakubu Gowon and Togo’s Gnassingbé Eyadéma argued that the region would only grow stronger if it worked together, and years of negotiation followed across the divide between English- and French-speaking states.
On 28 May 1975 the heads of state and government of fifteen countries, from Mauritania and Senegal to Nigeria and Niger, signed the Treaty of Lagos creating the Economic Community of West African States. Its aims were to boost trade and let people, goods and money move freely across the region. A revised treaty was signed in 1993, and ECOWAS has since taken on a wider role in keeping the peace in West Africa.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: ECOWAS: Creation (History) ↗
1961An appeal for ‘The Forgotten Prisoners’ starts a worldwide movement
Peter Benenson was a London lawyer who had defended people in political trials abroad. Angered by news of people jailed simply for their opinions, he wrote an article called ‘The Forgotten Prisoners’, which appeared in The Observer on Sunday 28 May 1961 and launched a one-year ‘Appeal for Amnesty’. It told the stories of six prisoners from different countries and political systems.
The article was picked up by newspapers around the world, and more than a thousand people wrote in offering to help. Benenson’s phrase ‘prisoner of conscience’ entered the language, and what was meant to be a short campaign became Amnesty International, a permanent movement of letter-writers and researchers. It won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 and now has millions of supporters.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Amnesty International UK: History ↗
