| 1774 | | Britain passes the Coercive Act against rebellious Massachusetts. |
| 1854 | | Britain and France declare war on Russia. |
| 1864 | | A group of Copperheads attack Federal soldiers in Charleston, Illinois. Five are killed and twenty wounded. |
| 1885 | | The Salvation Army is officially organized in the United States. |
| 1908 | | Automobile owners lobby Congress in support of a bill that calls for vehicle licensing and federal registration. |
| 1910 | | The first seaplane takes off from water at Martinques, France. |
| 1917 | | The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) is founded, Great Britain's first official service women. |
| 1921 | | President Warren Harding names William Howard Taft as chief justice of the United States. |
| 1930 | | Constantinople and Angora change their names to Istanbul and Ankara respectively. |
| 1933 | | Nazis order a ban on all Jews in businesses, professions and schools. |
| 1939 | | The Spanish Civil War ends as Madrid falls to Francisco Franco. |
| 1941 | | The Italian fleet is routed by the British at the Battle of Battle of Cape Matapan |
| 1941 | | English novelist Virginia Woolf throws herself into the River Ouse near her home in Sussex. Her body is never found. |
| 1942 | | A British ship, the HMS Capbeltown, a Lend-Lease American destroyer, which was specifically rammed into a German occupied dry-dock in France, explodes, knocking the area out of action for the German battleship Tirpitz. |
| 1945 | | Germany launches the last of its V-2 rockets against England. |
| 1946 | | Juan Peron is elected President of Argentina. He will hold the office for six years. |
| 1962 | | The U.S. Air Force announces research into the use of lasers to intercept missiles and satellites. |
| 1969 | | Dwight D. Eisenhower dies at Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, D.C. |
| 1979 | | A major accident occurs at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear power plant |
| 1986 | | The U.S. Senate passes $100 million aid package for the Nicaraguan contras. |
| 1990 | | Jesse Owens receives the Congressional Gold Medal from President George Bush. |
| 1999 | | An American Stealth F117 Nighthawk is shot down over northern Yugoslavia during NATO air strikes. |
Born on March 28 |
| 1652 | | Samuel Sewall, British colonial merchant and one of the Salem witch trial judges. |
| 1818 | | Wade Hampton, Confederate general in the American Civil War. |
| 1862 | | Aristide Briand, premier of France (1909-22). |
| 1868 | | Maxim Gorky, Russian short story writer and novelist. |
| 1895 | | James McCudden, the first RAF pilot to receive the Victoria Cross. |
| 1909 | | Nelson Algren, novelist (The Man with the Golden Arm, A Walk on the Wild Side). |
| 1929 | | Frederick Exley, American novelist (A Fan's Notes). |
| 1930 | | Jerome Isaac Friedman, American physicist, helped confirm the existence of quarks. |
| 1936 | | Mario Vargas Llosa, Peruvian novelist (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Death in the Andes). |
