According to data from Mempool, miners mined an empty block at Bitcoin block height 860932, which contained only the Coinbase transaction (the block reward) and no additional transactions. The time difference between this and the previous block was a mere 20 seconds.
Miners choose to mine empty blocks for economic reasons, making it a strategically sound decision. By doing so, miners can fully utilize the available time for mining and avoid conflicts with transactions already included in the parent block. This means they must attempt to mine an empty block without adding any transactions to it.