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Events

Special days marked on this website, for August 28, 2025

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August 28 ns

August 15 os

We mark certain days of the year with ‘On This Day’ posts, recalling events associated with them.

Our events are grouped under two calendars. The Gregorian ‘New Style’ (NS) is the worldwide calendar first issued at Rome in 1582. On that calendar, today is August 28. The Julian ‘Old Style’ (OS), also issued at Rome but in 46 BC, was used in Roman Britain and then in England from Anglo-Saxon times until 1752. It is still used today by roughly 100 million Orthodox Christians worldwide. On that calendar, today is August 15.

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Today

Precision and Dispatch

The first setbacks for the German Empire in the Great War came courtesy of ANZAC troops.

ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) troops were involved from the very beginning of the Great War on August 4th, 1914, not because they were summoned to Europe to protect Britain but because Germany’s growing colonial presence in the South Pacific was a direct threat to their independence.

On This DayDecember 22 ns1 post

The liberation of Samoa (1914)

Today

How Britain Abolished Slavery

The Church, mother Nature and free markets had almost done for slavery at home when colonies in the New World brought it back.

Landmark anti-slavery legislation in 1807 and 1833, said Russian writer Aleksey Khomiakov, had earned England the gratitude of the whole human race. But it had not always been like this. True, by Elizabethan times the Church (with a little help from Mother Nature and the free market) had all but plucked the weed of slavery from our soil; but in our New World colonies, it was soon starting to run riot.

On This DayDecember 22 ns1 post

Royal Assent for the Slavery Abolition Act (1833)

Today

With Hymns and Sweet Perfumes

Elfric imagines how the Virgin Mary went to her eternal home.

When Elfric, Abbot of Eynsham near Oxford during the reign of Ethelred the Unready (r. 978-1916), came to preach on August 15th, the Feast of the Repose of Mary, he was unusually tightlipped. Some of what was passed around he regarded as legend, but he was sure of one thing: that Mary did not go home to heaven all on her own.

On This DayDecember 9 os5 posts

The Dormition

The Calendar below shows the year on the Roman (Gregorian or ‘New Style’) Calendar for 2025. Click on any date to see the events we have marked for it.

Roman Easter 2025: Sunday April 20

Old English Easter 2025: Sunday April 20

Christmas 2025: Thursday December 25

Old English Christmas 2025: Wednesday January 7, 2026