October 28 is the 301st day of the year (302nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 64 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Wednesday, Friday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Monday or Tuesday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Thursday or Saturday (56).
NATIONAL CHOCOLATE DAY
NATIONAL CHOCOLATE DAY
1492 – On his first voyage, Christopher Columbus discovers Cuba and claims it for Spain.
1538 – The first university in the New World, the Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino, is established in Santo Domingo, Hispaniola. Founded during the reign of Charles I of Spain, it was originally a seminary operated by Catholic monks of the Dominican Order. It disappeared in 1823.
1776 – The Battle of White Plains was a battle in the New York and New Jersey campaign of the American Revolutionary War fought on October 28, 1776, near White Plains, New York. Following the retreat of George Washington's Continental Army northward from New York City, British General William Howe landed troops in Westchester County, intending to cut off Washington's escape route. Alerted to this move, Washington retreated farther, establishing a position in the village of White Plains but failed to establish firm control over local high ground. Howe's troops drove Washington's troops from a hill near the village; following this loss, Washington ordered the Americans to retreat farther north.
Later British movements chased Washington across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania. Washington then crossed the Delaware and surprised a brigade of Hessian troops in the December 26 Battle of Trenton.
1793 – Eli Whitney applies for a patent on cotton gin. The cotton gin is a mechanical device that removes the seeds from cotton, a process that had previously been extremely labor-intensive. The word gin is short for engine. The cotton gin was a wooden drum stuck with hooks that pulled the cotton fibers through a mesh. The cotton seeds would not fit through the mesh and fell outside.
1864 – On this day in 1864, at the Second Battle of Fair Oaks, Virginia, Union forces withdraw after failing to breach the Confederate defenses around Richmond. The assault was actually a diversion to draw attention from a larger Union offensive around Petersburg, Virginia. Some 1,100 Union men were killed, wounded, or captured during the attack, while the Confederates lost some 450 troops. The planned diversion did not work--at the far end of the defenses, the Yankees failed to move around the end of the Confederate line at Hatcher's Run.
1886 – President Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. The statue’s full name was Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World. It had been a gift from French citizens to their American friends in recognition of the two countries’ commitment to liberty and democracy and their alliance during the American Revolutionary War, which had begun 110 years earlier. The 151-foot copper statue was built in France and shipped to New York in 350 separate parts. It arrived in the city on June 17, 1886, and over the next several months was reassembled while electricians worked to wire the torch to light up at night.
Later British movements chased Washington across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania. Washington then crossed the Delaware and surprised a brigade of Hessian troops in the December 26 Battle of Trenton.
1793 – Eli Whitney applies for a patent on cotton gin. The cotton gin is a mechanical device that removes the seeds from cotton, a process that had previously been extremely labor-intensive. The word gin is short for engine. The cotton gin was a wooden drum stuck with hooks that pulled the cotton fibers through a mesh. The cotton seeds would not fit through the mesh and fell outside.
1864 – On this day in 1864, at the Second Battle of Fair Oaks, Virginia, Union forces withdraw after failing to breach the Confederate defenses around Richmond. The assault was actually a diversion to draw attention from a larger Union offensive around Petersburg, Virginia. Some 1,100 Union men were killed, wounded, or captured during the attack, while the Confederates lost some 450 troops. The planned diversion did not work--at the far end of the defenses, the Yankees failed to move around the end of the Confederate line at Hatcher's Run.
1886 – President Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. The statue’s full name was Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World. It had been a gift from French citizens to their American friends in recognition of the two countries’ commitment to liberty and democracy and their alliance during the American Revolutionary War, which had begun 110 years earlier. The 151-foot copper statue was built in France and shipped to New York in 350 separate parts. It arrived in the city on June 17, 1886, and over the next several months was reassembled while electricians worked to wire the torch to light up at night.
1924 – M. de Bruin, a quarry man and miner, discovers an infant fossil skull in a lime quarry in Taung, South Africa. Popularly known as the Taung child, Paleoanthropologist Raymond Dartidentifies the fossil as a new hominin species called Australopithecus Africanus (The Southern Africa Ape).
1942 – The Second Battle of El Alamein (23 October – 11 November 1942) took place near the Egyptian coastal city of El Alamein. With the Allies victorious, it marked a major turning point in the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. The North African conflict would continue until the Allies' final victory in Tunisia in May 1943 when, after German General Irwin Rommel was flown out for reassignment, the German Africa Corps was abandoned by Hilter and captured by the Allies.
1954 – Nobel prize for literature awarded to Ernest Hemingway. Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, (1930s) and Cuba (1940s and 1950s), and in 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where he committed suicide in the summer of 1961.
1965 – Workers "top out" the final section of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, completing construction of the nation's tallest memorial after four years of work. A graceful 603-foot high ribbon of gleaming stainless steel, the Gateway Arch spans 630 feet at the ground and is meant to symbolically mark the gateway from the eastern United States to the West. Architect Eero Saarinen's dramatic design was chosen during a 1947 competition, and has since become a landmark famous around the world.
1974 – The Soviet Union's Luna 23 was launched. Luna 23 was a Moon lander mission which was intended to return a lunar sample to Earth. Launched to the Moon by a Proton-K/D, the spacecraft was damaged during landing in Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises). The sample collecting apparatus could not operate and no samples were returned. The lander continued transmissions for three days after landing.
1974 – The Soviet Union's Luna 23 was launched. Luna 23 was a Moon lander mission which was intended to return a lunar sample to Earth. Launched to the Moon by a Proton-K/D, the spacecraft was damaged during landing in Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises). The sample collecting apparatus could not operate and no samples were returned. The lander continued transmissions for three days after landing.
1998 – According to an ABC news report, it was none other than the pop icon Prince himself who happened upon a 29-second home video of a toddler cavorting to a barely audible background soundtrack of his 1984 hit "Let's Go Crazy" and subsequently instigated a high-profile legal showdown involving YouTube, the Universal Music Group and a Pennsylvania housewife named Stephanie Lenz. Like the lawsuits that eventually shut down Napster, the case involved a piece of federal legislation that has helped establish a legal minefield surrounding the use of digital music in the age of the Internet. That legislation, called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on this day in 1998.
2006 – Funeral service for the peace of the executed at Bykivnia forest, outside of Kiev, Ukraine, with reburial of 817 Ukrainian civilians (out of some 100,000) executed by Bolsheviks at Bykivnia in 1930s - early 1940s. The Bykivnia Graves is a National Historic Memorial on the site of the former village of Bykivnia on the outskirts of Kiev. During the Stalinist period in the Soviet Union, it was one of the unmarked mass grave sites where the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, disposed of thousands of executed "enemies of the Soviet state".
2014 – An unmanned Antares rocket carrying NASA's Cygnus CRS Orb-3 resupply mission to the International Space Station explodes seconds after taking off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia.
TODAY'S BIRTHS
1510 – Francis Borgia, 4th Duke of Gandía, Spanish priest and saint, 3rd Superior General of the Society of Jesus (d. 1572)
1793 – Eliphalet Remington, American businessman, founded Remington Arms (d. 1861)
1903 – Evelyn Waugh, English journalist, author, and critic (d. 1966)
1955 – Bill Gates, American businessman and philanthropist, co-founded Microsoft
TODAY'S BIRTHS
1510 – Francis Borgia, 4th Duke of Gandía, Spanish priest and saint, 3rd Superior General of the Society of Jesus (d. 1572)
1793 – Eliphalet Remington, American businessman, founded Remington Arms (d. 1861)
1903 – Evelyn Waugh, English journalist, author, and critic (d. 1966)
1955 – Bill Gates, American businessman and philanthropist, co-founded Microsoft
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