December 28

Events

• 418 - St. Boniface I becomes Pope.
• 1065 - Westminster Abbey is consecrated.
• 1308 - The reign of Emperor Hanazono, the 95th imperial ruler of Japan, began.
• 1612 - Galileo Galilei was the first astronomer to observe the planet Neptune when it was in conjunction with Jupiter, yet he mistakenly catalogued it as a fixed star because of its extremely slow motion along the ecliptic at that time. Neptune was not truly discovered until 1846, about 234 years after Galileo first sighted it with his telescope.
• 1832 - John C. Calhoun becomes the first Vice President of the United States to resign.
• 1835 - Osceola led his Seminole warriors in Florida into the Second Seminole War against the U.S. Army.
• 1836 - South Australia and Adelaide are founded
• 1836 - Spain recognizes independence of Mexico.
• 1846 - Iowa is admitted as the 29th U.S. state.
• 1879 - The Tay Bridge Disaster: The central part of the Tay Rail Bridge in Dundee, Scotland collapses as a train passed over it, killing 75.
• 1895 - The Lumiere brothers have their first paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des Capucines -- this date is commonly considered the debut of the cinema.
• 1897 - The play Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand, premieres in Paris.
• 1902 - The first indoor professional American football game is played in New York City at Madison Square Garden.
• 1908 - An earthquake rocks Messina, Sicily killing over 75,000.
• 1945 - The U.S. Congress officially recognizes the Pledge of Allegiance
• 1950 - The Peak District becomes the United Kingdom's first National Park.
• 1973 - Alexander Solzhenitsyn publishes Gulag Archipelago.
• 1981 - The first American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, is born (Norfolk, Virginia).
• 1991 - Nine are crushed while a crowd pushes their way into a basketball game at City College of New York.
• 1991 - Sonic the Hedgehog Game Gear version is released in Japan.
• 1995 - CompuServe sets a precedent by blocking access to sex-oriented newsgroups after being pressured by German prosecutors.
• 1998 - Claudia Benton of West University Place, Texas is murdered in her home by Angel Maturino Resendiz. This is Angel's third victim in his third incident.
• 1999 - Saparmurat Niyazov was proclaimed President for Life in Turkmenistan.
• 2000 - Adrian Năstase; became the Prime Minister of Romania.
• 2000 - U.S. retail giant Montgomery Ward announces it is going out of business after 128 years.

Births

• 1856 - Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States (d. 1924)
• 1879 - Billy Mitchell, military aviation pioneer (d. 1936)
• 1882 - Arthur Eddington, astronomer and physicist (d. 1944)
• 1888 - Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, film director (d. 1931)
• 1899 - Eugeniusz Bodo, famous Polish actor (killed in 1943)
• 1902 - Mortimer Adler, philosopher (d. 1902)
• 1903 - Earl "Fatha" Hines, jazz musician (d. 1983)
• 1903 - John von Neumann, mathematician (d. 1957)
• 1905 - Cliff Arquette, actor, comedian ("Charley Weaver") (d. 1974)
• 1908 - Lew Ayres, actor (d. 1996)
• 1922 - Stan Lee, comic book writer
• 1925 - Hildegard Knef, actress, singer and writer (d. 2002)
• 1929 - Owen Bieber, labor leader
• 1929 - Brian Redhead, journalist and broadcaster (d. 1994)
• 1931 - Guy Debord, situationist (d. 1994)
• 1932 - Manuel Puig, writer (d. 1990)
• 1932 - Roy Hattersley, British politician
• 1933 - Nichelle Nichols, actress and singer
• 1934 - Maggie Smith, actress
• 1943 - Richard Whiteley, UK television presenter
• 1946 - Edgar Winter, musician
• 1947 - Aurelio Rodríguez, Major League Baseball player (d. 2000)
• 1949 - Jack Lovelock, New Zealand athlete
• 1953 - Richard Clayderman, pianist
• 1954 - Denzel Washington, actor
• 1967 - Chris Ware, cartoonist (Acme Novelty Library)
• 1969 - Linus Torvalds, programmer and initiator of Linux
• 1971 - Frank Sepe, bodybuilder and male model
• 1978 - John Legend, singer, songwriter, pianist
• 1984 - Bob Davits, famous SOCCOM player

Deaths

• 1367 - Ashikaga Yoshiakira, Japanese shogun (b. 1330)
• 1503 - Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of Florence (b. 1471)
• 1694 - Queen Mary II of England (b. 1662)
• 1706 - Pierre Bayle, French philosopher (b. 1647)
• 1859 - Thomas Macaulay, British poet, historian, and politician
• 1916 - Eduard Strauss, composer (b. 1835)
• 1918 - Olavo Bilac, poet (b. 1865)
• 1937 - Maurice Ravel, French composer (b. 1875)
• 1938 - Florence Lawrence, actress (b. 1886)
• 1945 - Theodore Dreiser, American author (b. 1871)
• 1947 - King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy (b. 1869)
• 1952 - Fletcher Henderson, jazz musician (b. 1897)
• 1963 - Paul Hindemith, German composer (b. 1895)
• 1967 - Katharine McCormick, American women's rights activist
• 1981 - Allan Dwan, film director (b. 1885)
• 1983 - William Demarest, actor
• 1983 - Jimmy Demaret, golf champion (b. 1910)
• 1983 - Dennis Wilson, musician (The Beach Boys) (b. 1944)
• 1984 - Sam Peckinpah, film director (b. 1925)
• 1986 - Andrei Tarkovsky, Russian film director (b. 1932)
• 1991 - Cassandra Harris, Australian actress (b. 1952)
• 1998 - Claudia Benton, child psychologist
• 1999 - Clayton Moore, American actor
• 2001 - William X. Kienzle, novelist
• 2003 - Benjamin Hacker, U.S. admiral (b. 1935)
• 2003 - Dinsdale Landen, British actor (b. 1932)
• 2004 - Jerry Orbach, actor (b. 1935)
• 2004 - Susan Sontag, American writer, feminist, activist (b. 1933)

Holidays and observances

• The third day of Christmas in Western Christianity.
• Childermas(Children's Mass) Old English name for Feast of the Holy Innocents, commemorating the children massacred on Herod's orders (part of the birth of Christ story in the Bible).
• Also called Massacre of the Innocents or el Día de los Santos Inocentes, it is a day of practical jokes, in the same spirit as April Fool's Day.
• Proclamation Day (South Australian public holiday), for the foundation of the Australian state of South Australia

External links

• BBC: On This Day
• Today in History: December 28

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