This day in history - October 28

Jamaican musician Bob Andy was born on this day in history, 1944.

Today is the 302nd day of 2024. There are 64 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2011: Commonwealth countries agree to change centuries-old succession rules that put sons on the British throne before older sisters.

OTHER EVENTS

1492: Christopher Columbus discovers Cuba during his first voyage to the New World. He claims it for Spain under the name Juana.

1636: Harvard College is founded in Massachusetts.

1708: Swedish King Charles XII takes Mohilev, Russia, and invades Ukraine.

1793: American inventor Eli Whitney files a patent for the cotton gin used to separate green seeds from staple cotton.

1836: Federation of Peru and Bolivia is proclaimed.

1886: The Statue of Liberty, a gift from the French people, is dedicated in New York Harbor by US President Grover Cleveland.

1919: Congress passes the Volstead Act, which enforces Prohibition, banning alcoholic beverages, after U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s vetoes.

1922: Fascism comes to Italy as Benito Mussolini takes control of the government.

1962: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announces that he has ordered the withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba.

1965: Pope Paul VI issues a decree absolving Jews of collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

1971: The House of Commons votes in favor of Britain’s entry into the European Common Market.

1974: Arab heads of state, including Jordan’s King Hussein, issue a statement calling for the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

1989: More than 10,000 demonstrators protest against the government to mark the 71st anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s independence; scores are hit or held.

1990: A coalition of non-communist pro-independence parties wins elections in Georgia, the last of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union to hold such elections in 1990.

1998: Hurricane Mitch stalls over Honduras with 125 mph winds, sweeping away bridges, flooding neighborhoods and killing hundreds of people.

2001: U.S. President George W. Bush announces the creation of a Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force to track and deport foreigners illegally in the United States.

2004: At least two people die and 21 are injured when a bomb explodes in a border town in Thailand’s restive Narathiwat province, where about 100 Muslims had previously gathered for the mass burial of 22 unidentified men killed in military custody during a violent protest.

2005: Russia issues a scathing response to a UN report documenting massive corruption in the oil-for-food program, claiming documents indicting Russian companies are fake.

2006: An overcrowded bus plunges off a mountain road in western Nepal, killing at least 42 people and injuring dozens.

2007: First Lady Cristina Fernandez claims victory in Argentina’s presidential election, becoming the first woman elected to the post.

2008: Former political prisoner Mohamed Nasheed defeats President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Asia’s longest-serving ruler, in the Maldives’ first democratic presidential elections.

2010: Two volcanoes erupt on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, sending huge clouds of ash miles into the air, forcing flights to be diverted and covering one city in thick, heavy ash.

2012: The Syrian air force fires rockets and drops barrel bombs on rebel strongholds as opposition fighters attack regime positions and ignore a UN-backed ceasefire that should have calmed fighting over a long holiday weekend , but never lasted.

2013: A ferocious coastal storm, powered by hurricane force, makes its way across Britain and Western Europe, felling trees, flooding lowlands and disrupting air, sea and land traffic hindered. At least thirteen deaths have been reported.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY

Evelyn Waugh, British novelist (1903-1966); Ivan Turgenev, Russian writer (1818-1883); Auguste Escoffier, French chef par excellence (1846-1935); Francis Bacon, British painter (1909-1992); Dr. Jonas Salk, American physician, developer of the first polio vaccine (1914-1995); Bill Gates, American chairman of Microsoft (1955-); Julia Roberts, American actress (1967-); Ben Harper, American rock singer (1969-); Bob Andy (birth name Keith Anderson) Jamaican reggae singer/songwriter (1944-2020); Stanley Roy Goodridge, former Jamaican cricketer (1928-2016)

– AP/Jamaica Observer