TODAY IN CRIME: September 28

48 BCE Officers under orders from King Ptolemy of Egypt fell upon Roman general Pompey as soon as he stepped foot in Egypt after his defeat by Caesar. The assassins stabbed him to death, cut off his head, and threw his naked body into the sea. Ptolemy hope to gain favor with Caesar for the assassination but the dictator was appalled because he’d planned to pardon Pompey, his most ardent rival.

235 Roman emperor Maximinus Thrax, an opponent of Christianity, exiled both Pope Pontian and anti-Pope Hippolytus, church leader of Rome, to the mines of Sardinia, a certain death sentence.

365 Roman usurper Procopius bribed two legions passing by Constantinople and proclaimed himself emperor. Two of his generals betrayed him to the rightful emperor, though, and he was beheaded a few months later.

935 Nobleman Boleslav I the Cruel and three allies stabbed to death Boleslav's older brother, Duke of Bohemia Wenceslas I, on his way to mass. Boleslav became the Duke and “Good King” Wenceslas became the patron saint of the Czech state. Every year on this day, the Archbishop of Prague parades the skull of St. Wenceslas through the town of his murder, Stará Boleslav.

Sixty years later to the day, Boleslav’s son, Boleslav II the Pious, murdered most members of the rival Slavník dynasty—Spytimír, Pobraslav, Pořej and Čáslav—and added their land to his dukedom.

1787 The U.S. Congress sent the new Constitution to the states for their approval.

1850 The U.S. Navy abolished flogging as a form of punishment.

1871 The Brazilian Parliament passed a law granting freedom to all government-owned slaves and all new children born to slaves.

1904 NYPD arrested a woman for smoking a cigarette in a car on 5th Avenue.

1919 In Omaha, Nebraska, a mob of between 5-15,000 whites assaulted police officers guarding the courthouse where Will Brown, a Black man, was being held on suspicion of raping a white woman. The mob set the courthouse on fire, cut all fire hoses, looted downtown stores, beat up black citizens at random, and almost succeeded in lynching Mayor Edward Smith. Deputies and prisoners, trapped in the burning courthouse, threw Brown to the crowd. He was hanged from a telephone pole and riddled with bullets before being cut down and dragged behind a car for blocks, burned, and paraded through the streets. 1600 Army soldiers finally restored order.

1920 A Chicago grand jury indicted eight Chicago White Sox players for fixing the 1919 World Series in the Black Sox Scandal. All eight were acquitted at trial but banned from professional baseball and consideration for the Hall of Fame.

1928 The U.K. Parliament passed the Dangerous Drugs Act outlawing cannabis, although doctors could continue to prescribe it. On this day in 1971, Parliament banned the medicinal use of cannabis.

1931 200,000 demonstrators in Peking demanded a declaration of war on Japan after Japanese forces invaded Manchuria.

1958 France ratified the Constitution of the Fifth Republic.

1961 In Damascus, Syria, Syrian Army officers unhappy with Egypt’s dominance in the United Arab Republic staged a coup, effectively ending the union between Egypt and Syria. An independent Syrian Republic was restored—for a while.

1973 The Weather Underground bombed the ITT Building on Madison Avenue in New York City for ITT's alleged involvement in the September 11 military coup d'état in Chile. The company reportedly helped finance Pinochet.

1975 Three robbers took the staff of the Spaghetti House restaurant in Knightsbridge, London, hostage and barricaded themselves in the basement for six days.

1995 French mercenary Bob Denard and 33 freelance soldiers took the islands of the Comoros in a coup. It was his third coup there, but this time France sent paratroopers to stop him and Denard was forced to surrender.

1995 In Boston, gunman John Tibbs opened fire on the luxury Bentley of pop singer Bobby Brown, killing passenger Steve Sealy, Brown’s childhood friend, bodyguard, and would-be brother-in-law. Brown ducked under the steering wheel and escaped injury during the ensuing gun battle. Prosecutors believe either robbery, a turf war, or jealousy motivated the shooting: local gang members begrudged Sealy’s closeness to Brown, who grew up in Roxbury. Tibbs received 27 years in prison.

2009 The Presidential Guard of Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, leader of the junta government in Guinea, sprayed tear gas and opened fire on an estimated 50,000 pro-democracy protesters at a rally at a football stadium in Conakry, Guinea. At least 157 demonstrators were shot or bayoneted and 1,250 injured. A U.N. panel reported more than 100 women and girls were raped or sexually mutilated during the chaos following the shooting. A handful of protest leaders were arrested.

2012 Saudi Arabian authorities deported more than 170 women who arrived from Nigeria without a male escort. The women were on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Officials detained about 1,000 Nigerian women during the week before. 

2018 Facebook reported an unknown hacker, using a code weakness, had breached the accounts of as many as 50 million users.

2018 A Las Vegas woman accused football star Cristiano Ronaldo of rape in a lawsuit filed in Nevada. Kathryn Mayorga claimed Ronaldo assaulted her in a Las Vegas penthouse suite in 2009. In 2010 Mayargo signed a non-disclosure agreement in exchange for $375,000; no criminal charges were ever filed. The new suit included charges of battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, coercion, fraud, abuse of a vulnerable person, racketeering, defamation, abuse of process, negligence, and breach of contract.