28 December
December 28 is the 362nd day of the year (363rd in leap years) in the
Gregorian Calendar, with 3 days remaining.
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 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 - John von Neumann,
mathematician (d. 1957)
- 1903 - Earl "Fatha" Hines, jazz musician (d. 1983)
- 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)
- 1932 - Roy Hattersley,
British politician
- 1932 - Manuel Puig, writer (d.
1990)
- 1933 - Nichelle Nichols,
actress and singer
- 1934 - Maggie Smith, actress
- 1946 - Edgar Winter,
musician
- 1949 - Jack Lovelock, New
Zealand athlete
- 1953 - Richard
Clayderman, pianist
- 1954 - Denzel
Washington, actor
- 1969 - Linus Torvalds,
programmer and initiator of Linux
- 1971 - Frank Sepe, bodybuilder and
male model
Deaths
- 1367 - Ashikaga
Yoshiakira, Ashikaga shogun (b. 1330)
- 1694 - Queen Mary II of
England (b. 1662)
- 1916 - Eduard Strauss,
composer (b. 1835)
- 1918 - Olavo Bilac, poet (b.
1865)
- 1937 - Maurice Ravel, composer
(b. 1875)
- 1938 - Florence
Lawrence, Hollywood's first "star" (b. 1886)
- 1945 - Theodore Dreiser,
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, U.S. women's rights activist
- 1981 - Allan Dwan, pioneer 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 movie 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. Naval Admiral, (b. 1935)
- 2003 - Dinsdale Landen, British actor (b. 1932)
- 2004 - Jerry Orbach, actor
(Law & Order) (b. 1935)
- 2004 - Susan Sontag, writer, feminist, activist (b. 1933)
Holidays and observances
December 27 - December
29 - November 28 - January
28 -- listing of all days
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