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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.

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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.
• 1869 - William E. Semple of Mt. Vernon, Ohio, patented "the combination of rubber with other articles adapted to the formation of an acceptable chewing gum."
• 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.
• 1928 - The first Municipally owned streetcars take to the streets in San Francisco.
• 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.
• 1975 - Roger Staubach throws possibly the most famous pass of all time, The Hail Mary Pass.
• 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.
• 1983 - Drummer for The Beach Boys, Dennis C. Wilson, drowned at age 39.
• 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.

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)
• 1898 - Carl-Gustaf Rossby, Swedish meteorologist (b. 1957)
• 1899 - Eugeniusz Bodo, Polish actor (d. 1943)
• 1902 - Mortimer Adler, American philosopher (d. 2001)
• 1902 - Shen Congwen, Chinese writer (d. 1988)
• 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)
• 1929 - Terry Sawchuk, Canadian hockey player (d. 1970)
• 1931 - Guy Debord, French writer and filmmaker (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
• 1938 - Charles Neville, American musician (Neville Brothers)
• 1940 - Don Francisco, Chilean TV host
• 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 - Adam Vinatieri, American Football player
• 1978 - John Legend, American singer, songwriter, and pianist
• 1981 - Sienna Miller, English actress
• 1982 - Cedric Benson, American football player
• 1989 - Mackenzie Rosman, American actress

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)
• 1919 - Johannes Rydberg, Swedish physicist (b. 1854)
• 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)
• 1976 - Katharine Byron, U.S. Congresswoman (b. 1903)
• 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)

Holidays and observances

• Calendar of Saints - Feast of the Holy Innocents, a.k.a. Childermas, commemorating the Massacre of the Innocents on order of king Herod the Great.
• The third day of Christmas in Western Christianity.
• Australia - Proclamation Day (South Australian public holiday), for the foundation of the Australian state of South Australia in 1836.
• USA - Admission Day of Iowa (29th state, 1846)
• Spain Dia de los santos inocentes (Similar to April's fools)

External links

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

December 27 - December 29 - November 28 - January 28 -- listing of all days