On this day — August 28 in African history

The Slavery Abolition Act received royal assent from the British Parliament, setting in motion the emancipation of more than 800,000 enslaved Africans across the British Empire the following year.

Alexander Bassano — Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

King Cetshwayo kaMpande, the last independent monarch of the Zulu Kingdom, was captured by British forces, effectively ending the Anglo-Zulu War.

U.S. News & World Report Collection, Library of Congress — Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech to some 250,000 people at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a landmark moment in the civil rights movement.

Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was abducted and lynched in Mississippi after being accused of offending a white woman, a killing that galvanized the American civil rights movement.

Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Muhammad Naguib, the army general who became Egypt's first president after the 1952 revolution before being ousted by Nasser, died.

Chadwick Boseman, the American actor whose portrayal of T'Challa in "Black Panther" made him a global icon, died of colon cancer at age 43.