On This Day: August 28

August 28 opens three doors at once: a march that filled the National Mall, a spacecraft that caught an asteroid's tiny moon, and a drugstore soda renamed for a national market. Three scenes ask what happens when a private hope meets a much larger public. 1

On August 28, 1963, organizers staged the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. An estimated 250,000 people filled the National Mall near the Lincoln Memorial—one of the largest single-day protests in American history. Civil rights leaders including A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, John Lewis, and Martin Luther King, Jr. came together to protest racial discrimination and support major civil rights legislation still pending in Congress. 2

King spoke last. Standing before the Lincoln Memorial, he delivered the address remembered as the "I Have a Dream" speech. Near the end, at Mahalia Jackson's urging, he left the prepared text for the dream passage that named the speech forever: a nation living out its creed that all men are created equal, and children judged by character rather than skin color. The march did not pass a bill that afternoon, but Britannica notes that the rising tide of agitation helped build the pressure that contributed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 23

On August 28, 1993, NASA's Galileo spacecraft flew past asteroid 243 Ida at about 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) while en route to Jupiter. Ida, a cratered main-belt S-type body about 55 kilometers long and 24 wide, was the second asteroid visited by a spacecraft after Gaspra in 1991. Galileo's cameras also captured a tiny companion later named Dactyl, only about 1.5 kilometers across. Scientists did not recognize the moon on flyby day; Ann Harch of the imaging team found it on February 17, 1994, while reviewing returned pictures. That made Ida the first asteroid known to have a natural satellite. 45

On August 28, 1898, in New Bern, North Carolina, pharmacist Caleb Bradham began marketing his popular "Brad's Drink" as Pepsi-Cola. Patrons at his drugstore on Middle and Pollock streets already knew the sweet mix of sugar, caramel, kola nut, lemon oil, nutmeg, and carbonated water. In a temperance-minded South, the alcohol-free soda was also a social gathering drink; Bradham claimed it aided digestion, though pepsin was never in the formula. The rename aimed beyond New Bern: railroads were knitting a national market, and catchy branding was how a hometown product reached strangers. Bradham incorporated the Pepsi-Cola Company in 1902. 67

August 28 leaves three public turns: a dream spoken to a nation, an asteroid found to have a moon, and a drugstore recipe given a name built to travel.