December 28

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December 28 is the 362nd day of the year (363rd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 3 days remaining.

1 Events
2 Births
3 Deaths
4 Holidays and observances
5 External links

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Events

418 - St. Boniface I becomes Pope.
1065 - Westminster Abbey is consecrated.
1308 - The reign of Emperor Hanazono, emperor of Japan, begins.
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.
1941 - Starts the Operation Anthropoid (the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague).
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.
1974 - Senegalese marxist group Reenu-Rew founds the political movement And-Jëf at a clandestine congress.
1981 - The first American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, is born (Norfolk, Virginia).
1981 - The HBO pay cable television service expanded its schedule offering to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
1984 - The final telecast of soap opera The Edge of Night (which started from 1956 to 1975 on CBS) on ABC due to TV stations dropping the show in favor of syndicated programming, losing sponsorship, and low ratings.
1989 -A magnitude 5.6 earthquake hits Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, killing 13 people.
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.

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Births

1164 - Emperor Rokujo of Japan (d. 1176)
1522 - Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands (d. 1583)
1619 - Antoine Furetière, French writer (d. 1688)
1655 - Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, First Lord of the British Admiralty (d. 1698)
1665 - George FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Northumberland, English general (d. 1716)
1856 - Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1924)
1879 - Billy Mitchell, American military aviation pioneer (d. 1936)
1882 - Arthur Eddington, English astronomer and physicist (d. 1944)
1888 - Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, German film director (d. 1931)
1899 - Eugeniusz Bodo, Polish actor (d. 1943)
1902 - Mortimer Adler, American philosopher (d. 1902)
1903 - Earl "Fatha" Hines, American musician (d. 1983)
1903 - John von Neumann, Hungarian-born mathematician (d. 1957)
1905 - Cliff Arquette, American actor and comedian (d. 1974)
1908 - Lew Ayres, American actor (d. 1996)
1922 - Stan Lee, American comic book writer
1924 - Milton Obote, President of Uganda (d. 2005)
1925 - Hildegard Knef, German actress, singer and writer (d. 2002)
1929 - Brian Redhead, English journalist and broadcaster (d. 1994)
1931 - Guy Debord, French philosopher (d. 1994)
1932 - Dhirubhai Ambani, Indian businessman (d. 2002)
1932 - Manuel Puig, Argentine writer (d. 1990)
1932 - Roy Hattersley, British politician
1933 - Nichelle Nichols, American actress and singer
1934 - Maggie Smith, English actress
1943 - Richard Whiteley, British television presenter (d. 2005)
1944 - Kary Mullis, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1946 - Edgar Winter, American musician
1947 - Aurelio Rodríguez, baseball player (d. 2000)
1953 - Richard Clayderman, French pianist
1954 - Denzel Washington, American actor
1956 - Nigel Kennedy, English violinist
1967 - Chris Ware, American cartoonist
1969 - Linus Torvalds, Finnish computer programmer
1971 - Frank Sepe, American bodybuilder and model
1972 - Patrick Rafter, Australian tennis player
1972 - Michael Tillson, American school teacher
1978 - John Legend, American singer, songwriter, and pianist
1981 - Sienna Miller, English Actress
1982 - Cedric Benson, American football player

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Deaths

1367 - Ashikaga Yoshiakira, Japanese shogun (b. 1330)
1446 - Antipope Clement VIII
1503 - Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of Florence (b. 1471)
1558 - Hermann Finck, German composer (b. 1527)
1622 - Francis de Sales, Bishop of Geneva and saint (b. 1567)
1663 - Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Italian mathematician and physicist (b. 1618)
1671 - Johann Friedrich Gronovius, German classical scholar (b. 1611)
1694 - Queen Mary II of England (b. 1662)
1703 - Mustafa II, Ottoman Sultan (b. 1664)
1706 - Pierre Bayle, French philosopher (b. 1647)
1708 - Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, French botanist (b. 1656)
1715 - William Carstares, Scottish minister (b. 1649)
1734 - Robert Roy MacGregor, Scottish folk hero (b. 1671)
1736 - Antonio Caldara, Italian composer (b. 1670)
1829 - Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, French scientist (b. 1744)
1859 - Thomas Macaulay, British poet, historian, and politician (b. 1800)
1900 - Alexandre Alberto da Rocha de Serpa Pinto, Portuguese explorer (b. 1846)
1916 - Eduard Strauss, Austrian composer (b. 1835)
1918 - Olavo Bilac, Brazilian poet (b. 1865)
1924 - Léon Bakst, Russian artist (b. 1866)
1937 - Maurice Ravel, French composer (b. 1875)
1938 - Florence Lawrence, American actress (b. 1886)
1945 - Theodore Dreiser, American author (b. 1871)
1947 - King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy (b. 1869)
1949 - Jack Lovelock, New Zealand athlete (b. 1910)
1952 - Fletcher Henderson, American musician (b. 1897)
1963 - Paul Hindemith, German composer (b. 1895)
1967 - Katharine McCormick, American women's rights activist (b. 1875)
1981 - Allan Dwan, Canadian-born film director (b. 1885)
1983 - William Demarest, American actor (b. 1892)
1983 - Jimmy Demaret, American golfer (b. 1910)
1983 - Dennis Wilson, American musician (The Beach Boys) (b. 1944)
1984 - Sam Peckinpah, American film director (b. 1925)
1986 - Andrei Tarkovsky, Russian film director (b. 1932)
1989 - Hermann Oberth, German physicist (b. 1894)
1991 - Cassandra Harris, Australian actress (b. 1952)
1998 - Claudia Benton, Peruvian child psychologist (b. 1959)
1999 - Clayton Moore, American actor (b. 1914)
2001 - William X. Kienzle, American novelist (b. 1928)
2003 - Benjamin Hacker, U.S. admiral (b. 1935)
2003 - Dinsdale Landen, British actor (b. 1932)
2004 - Jerry Orbach, American actor (b. 1935)
2004 - Susan Sontag, American writer and activist (b. 1933)

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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