April 28
Birthdays
James Monroe 1758
Saddam Hussein 1937
Jay Leno 1950
Misc. History
357 - Constantius II visited Rome for the first time.
1282 - Villagers in Palermo led a revolt against French rule in Sicily.
1635 - Virginia Governor John Harvey was accused of treason and removed from office.
1686 - The first volume of Isaac Newton's "Principia Mathamatic" was published.
1788 - Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the U.S. constitution.
1789 - A mutiny on the British Bounty took place when a rebel crew took the ship and set sail to Pitcairn Island. The mutineers left Captain W. Bligh and 18 sailors adrift.
1818 - U.S. President James Monroe proclaimed naval disarmament on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain.
1896 - The Addressograph was patented by J.S. Duncan.
1902 - A revolution broke out in the Dominican Republic.
1910 - First night air flight was performed by Claude Grahame-White in England.
1914 - W.H. Carrier patented the design of his air conditioner.
1916 - The British declared martial law throughout Ireland.
1920 - Azerbaijan joined the USSR.
1930 - The first organized night baseball game was played in Independence, Kansas.
1932 - The yellow fever vaccine for humans was announced.
1937 - The first animated-cartoon electric sign was displayed on a building on Broadway in New York City. It was created by Douglas Leight.
1945 - Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were executed by Italian partisans as they attempted to flee the country.
1946 - The Allies indicted Tojo with 55 counts of war crimes.
1947 - Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl and five others set out in a balsa wood craft known as Kon Tiki to prove that Peruvian Indians could have settled in Polynesia. The trip took 101 days.
1952 - The U.S. occupation of Japan ended.
1953 - French troops evacuated northern Laos.
1957 - Mike Wallace was seen on TV for the first time. He was the host of "Mike Wallace Interviews."
1959 - Arthur Godfrey was seen for the last time in the final broadcast of "Arthur Godfrey and His Friends" on CBS-TV.
1965 - The U.S. Army and Marines invaded the Dominican Republic to evacuate Americans.
1967 - Muhammad Ali refused induction into the U.S. Army and was stripped of boxing title. He sited religious grounds for his refusal.
1969 - Charles de Gaulle resigned as president of France.
1969 - In Santa Rosa, CA, Charles M. Schulz's Redwood Empire Ice Arena opened.
1974 - The last Americans were evacuated from Saigon.
1977 - Christopher Boyce was convicted of selling U.S. secrets.
1985 - The largest sand castle in the world was completed near St. Petersburg, FL. It was four stories tall.
1988 - In Maui, HI, one flight attendant was killed when the fuselage of a Boeing 737 ripped open in mid-flight.
1989 - Mobil announced that they were divesting from South Africa because congressional restrictions were too costly.
1994 - Former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who had given U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and then Russia, plead guilty to espionage and tax evasion. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
1996 - U.S. President Clinton gave a 4 1/2 hour videotaped testimony as a defense witness in the criminal trial of his former Whitewater business partners.
1997 - A worldwide treaty to ban chemical weapons took effect. Russia and other countries such as Iraq and North Korea did not sign.
2000 - Jay Leno received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
