October 28^th is

World Animation Day *

National Chocolate Day II

Plush Animal Lover’s Day

St. Jude’s Day

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MORE! Trajan, Edith Head and Jonas Salk, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Brazil –Dia do Servidor Público
(Civil Servants’ Day)

Cyprus and Greece – Oxi Day *
(‘No’ Day – Greek National Day)

Czech Republic – Den vzniku samostatneho
ceskoslovenskeho statu (Independence Day)

Hong Kong and Macau – Chung Yeung Festival
(Festival of Ancestors)

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On This Day in HISTORY

AD 97 – Roman Emperor Nerva is forced by the Praetorian Guard to adopt Marcus Ulpius Trajanus (Trajan) as his heir and successor

1420 – Beijing is officially designated the capital of the Ming dynasty in the same year that the Forbidden City, the seat of government, is completed

1466 – Desiderius Erasmus born, Dutch Renaissance humanist, priest, scholar, social critic and theologian; has been called “the crowning glory of the Christian humanists”

1538 – First university in the ‘New World’ (present-day Dominican Republic), the  Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino, is established

1636 – New College is established by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony – it will be renamed Harvard in 1639

1793 – Eli Whitney applied for a patent for his cotton gin

1793 – Eliphalet Remington born, American inventor and firearms manufacturer

1794– Robert Liston born, Scottish surgeon who performed the first European operation using ether, and invented  see-through isinglass sticking plaster, Bulldogs forceps (a type of locking artery forceps), and a leg splint used to stabilize dislocations and fractures of the femur, and still used today

1846 – Georges Auguste Escoffier born, French culinary artist

1858 – Rowland Macy opens his first New York store, in Manhattan

1875 – Gilbert H. Grosvenor born, American geographer; president of National Geographic Society (1920-1954)

1884 – William Douglas Cook born, New Zealand horticulturalist; founder of Eastwoodhill Arboretum, now the national arboretum of New Zealand

1886 – ‘Liberty Enlightening the World’ a gift from the people of France, is dedicated by President Cleveland, and quickly becomes better-known as ‘The Statue of Liberty’

1892 – Dink Johnson born, American Dixieland pianist, clarinetist and drummer

1893 – Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky conducts the first public performance of his Symphony Number Six in B minor, “Pathetique”

1896 – Howard Hanson born, American composer, conductor and musical theorist; director of the Eastman School of Music (1924-1964); won the 1944 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Symphony no. 4

1897 – Edith Head born, American motion-picture costume designer, who won eight Academy Awards for Best Costume Design, from The Heiress in 1949 to The Sting in  1973; created everything from Dorothy Lamour’s sarong to Audrey Hepburn’s stylish clothes for Breakfast at Tiffany’s

1903 – Evelyn Waugh born, English author of novels, biographies and travel books;  A Handful of Dust,  Brideshead Revisited, and The Loved One

1904 – The St. Louis Police Department begins using fingerprinting

1905 – Tatyana van Aardenne-Ehrenfest born, Dutch mathematician; contributed to De Bruijn sequences, the discrepancy theorem and the BEST theorem

1914 – Jonas Salk born, American medical researcher who develops the first vaccine against polio

1919 – The Volstead Act, also called the National Prohibition Act becomes law

1922 – Fascist Benito Mussolini takes control of the Italian government

1922 – Gershon Kingsley born in Germany, American composer, pioneer of electronic music and the Moog synthesizer, and co-founder of the First Moog Quartet

1927 – Cleo Laine born as Clementine Bullock, daughter of a Jamaican father and an English mother, English jazz singer with a vocal range over of over three octaves

1929 – Virginia P. Held born, American social-political and feminist philosopher, whose work centers on the ethics of caregiving and the roles of women in society

1936 – Charlie Daniels born, American musician, singer and lyricist, bluegrass, country and Southern rock; “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”

1936 – The Statue of Liberty is rededicated by FDR on its 50^th anniversary

1938 – Anne Perry born Juliet Hulme, English author of historical detective fiction

1939 – Jane Alexander born, Tony Award winner, Two-time Emmy winner, Four-time Academy Award nominee, Director of the National Endowment for the Arts (1993-97)

1940 – Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas says, “No” to an ultimatum made by Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini demanding he allow Italian forces to occupy strategic locations in Greece or otherwise face war – celebrated in Greece and Cyprus as Oxi Day * (Greek for ‘no’ – pronounced ‘oh-hee’)

1940 – Susan S. Harris born, American television comedy writer-producer

1942 – Gillian Lovegrove born, British computer scientist and academic; worked on object-oriented computing; advocate for gender balance in computer education and employment; with Wendy Hall, organized ‘Women into Computing’ conferences

1949 – President Truman swears in Eugenie Moore Anderson as U.S ambassador to Denmark, first American woman appointed as chief of mission at ambassador level

1950 – Sihem Bensedrine born, Tunisian journalist and human rights advocate; honored by OXFAM in 2005 with their Novib/PEN Award

1956 – Elvis Presley’s song “Love Me Tender” became the No. 1 Billboard Pop Hit, the first time a musician had back-to-back hits in the  No. 1 spot, because “Don’t Be Cruel/Hound Dog” had been the previous No. 1 song for 11 weeks

1957 – Marian P. Bell born, British economist; Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Board (2002-2005); Royal Bank of Scotland (1982-1989 and 1991-2000); Governor of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (2014 to present)

1958 – Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli is elected Pope, taking the name John XXIII

1962 – Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev informs U.S. President Kennedy that he  ordered the dismantling of Soviet missile bases in Cuba

1963 – The Beach Boys release “Be True To Your School” in the U.S.

1965 – Pope Paul VI issues a decree absolving Jews of collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and the Gateway Arch is completed in St. Louis MO

1965 – The Supremes record “My World is Empty Without You”

1976 – John D. Erlichman, former aide to disgraced President Nixon, enters a federal prison camp to serve his sentence for Watergate-related convictions

1982 – Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev condemns the U.S. for arms buildup

1983 – The U.S. vetoes a U.N. Security Council resolution “deeply deploring” the ongoing U.S.-led invasion of Grenada

1986 – The centennial of the Statue of Liberty is celebrated in New York

1991 – Metallica releases their single “The Unforgiven”

2002 – World Animation Day * is launched by ASIFA, Association Internationale du Film d’Animation – the International Film Association to honor the first public showing of Emile Reynaud’s Theatre Optique in Paris, on October 28, 1892

2005 – Vice President Dick Cheney’s top adviser, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, resigned after he is indicted on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements in the CIA leak investigation. Libby will be convicted and sentenced to 30 months in prison, but President George W. Bush will commute his sentence

2007 – Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is elected Argentina’s first woman president

2009 – Angela Merkel is sworn in for a second term as German chancellor

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

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