Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

The University of Georgia

June 28

1742 Spanish Florida Governor Manuel de Montiano arrived off the southern tip of St. Simons Island with a fleet of 36 ships and 2,000 men.

Here, James Oglethorpe and a total of about 900 men stood between the Spanish flotilla and Georgia and South Carolina. As the sun went down, the ships were at anchor – but it was now clear that the long-expected Spanish invasion of Georgia had begun.

1776 Delegates from the 13 colonies attending the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia were presented Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence.

1824 William Tatum Wofford was born in Habersham County, Georgia. He became a lawyer and then served in the Mexican War. Wofford returned to Georgia, where he became a planter, politician, and newspaper editor. After the outbreak of the Civil War, Wofford was appointed a colonel in the 18th Georgia Infantry. In January 1863, he was promoted to brigadier general and commanded a brigade in McLaws Division at Gettysburg and a brigade in Kershaw's Division at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg.

On Nov. 15, 1865, Georgia voters elected Wofford to the U.S. House of Representatives, but he was denied his seat by Radical Republicans. Wofford died on May 22, 1884, near Cass Station in Bartow County.

1887 Atlanta druggist and chemist John S. Pemberton registered a patent for "Coca-Cola Syrup and Extract."

1913 John M. Slaton was inaugurated as governor of Georgia, succeeding Joseph M. Brown.

1948 Future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was born near Savannah, Georgia. After a year in seminary school, he earned an undergraduate degree from Holy Cross College, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1974. In July 1991, President George H.W. Bush nominated Thomas for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. After lengthy Senate confirmation hearings, Thomas was approved and took his oath of office in October 1991 becoming the fifth Georgia-born justice in the history of the Supreme Court.

1959 A Seaboard Air Line Railroad train derailed, then burned, near Meldrim, Georgia, resulting in 23 deaths and 7 injuries.

1997 Atlanta boxer Evander Holyfield retained his heavyweight championship in his rematch with former champion Mike Tyson. In the strangest of matches, Tyson was disqualified at the end of the third round for biting Holyfield's ear again after having been warned earlier. This time, Tyson bit off part of Holyfield's ear.

 2005 Leah Ward Sears was sworn in as chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court; thus becoming the first African-American female state supreme court justice in the nation, and the first female state supreme court justice in Georgia. Sears served four years as chief justice, stepping down at the end of her term on June 30, 2009, and returning to the private practice of law. Since then, her name has been on the short list for appointment as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court on two occasions.

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1738 Daniel Buttrick, a missionary working among the Cherokee Indians, witnessed the roundup and removal of the Cherokees to the west. On this day he recorded in his diary:

"Last night a company of about twenty Cherokees returned who had escaped from the last company of 1100 who had been started off to the West by land. They say that the whole company almost famished, that for two days together they had nothing to eat and rest of the time but very little. They say that as the company were about to cross the river, on starting one woman was very sick, unable to sit up and lay on the ground, that a soldier came along and kicked her in the side and drove her into the boat and that [she] in a short time was missing. they suppose she died. Six individuals had died before they left the company. It is said that many old women, driven in this company, cried like children when they started, saying they never could live to walk that journey in this hot season. But their cries would not be heard. . . ."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.) Georgia: History written by Those who lived It (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1995), p. 84.