TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: OCTOBER 28
0969 After a prolonged siege, the Byzantines end 300 years of Arab rule in Antioch.
1216 Henry III of England is crowned.
1538 The first university in the New World, the Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino, is established on Hispaniola
1636 Harvard College was founded in Massachusetts. The original name was Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was the first school of higher education in America.
1768 Germans and Acadians join French Creoles in their armed revolt against the Spanish governor of New Orleans.
1776 Battle of White Plains; Washington retreats to NJ
1886 “From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome”
The Statue of Liberty, originally named Liberty Enlightening the World, is dedicated at Liberty Island, N. Y., formerly Bedloe’s Island, by President Grover Cleveland
1901 Race riots sparked by Booker T. Washington’s visit to the White House kill 34.
1904 The St. Louis Police Department became the first to use fingerprinting.
1919 Over President Wilson’s veto, Congress passes the National Prohibition Act, or Volstead Act, named after its promoter, Congressman Andrew J. Volstead. It provides enforcement guidelines for the Prohibition Amendment.
1922 Benito Mussolini took control of the government of Italy.
1924 Miner M.de Bruin discovers the infant fossil skull, “Taung child” in a lime quarry in Taung, South Africa. Paleoanthropologist Raymond Dart identifies the fossil as a new hominin species, Australopithecus africanus.
1938 Germany expels Polish jews. Germany expelled about 17000 Polish Jews and sent them to Poland which refused to take them in.
1948 Flag of Israel is adopted
1960 In a note to the OAS (Organization of American States), the United States charges that Cuba has been receiving substantial quantities of arms and numbers of military technicians” from the Soviet bloc.
1962 Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev orders Soviet missiles removed from Cuba, ending the Cuban Missile Crisis.
1976 John D. Erlichman, a former aide to U.S. President Richard Nixon, entered a federal prison camp in Safford, AZ, to begin serving his sentence for Watergate-related convictions.
1982 The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party wins election, giving Spain its first Socialist government since the death of right-wing President Francisco Franco.
1988 Roussel Uclaf, a French manufacturer that produces the abortion pill RU486, announced it would resume distribution of the drug after the government of France demanded it do so.
1994 U.S. President Clinton visited Kuwait and implied that all the troops there would be home by Christmas.
1996 The Dow Jones Industial Average gained a record 337.17 points (or 5%). The day before the Dow had dropped 554.26 points (or 7%).
2005 Libby “Scooter” Lewis, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, resigns after being indicted for “outing” CIA agent Valerie Plame.
2007 Argentina Elects its First Female President. Former First Lady of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, won the elections with over 45% of all votes cast.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
