1928

Events in 1928 113

• 1840 – 1928 Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) Died 11 January 1928, aged 87 English novelist and poet, author of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd and Jude the Obscure. After the hostile reception of Jude he gave up fiction for poetry. His ashes were interred in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner.
• 1847 – 1928 Ellen Terry (1847-1928) Died 21 July 1928, aged 81 English actress who was the leading Shakespearean actress of her era. She was Henry Irving's stage partner at the Lyceum Theatre for more than twenty years. She was made a Dame Grand Cross in 1925.
• 1852 – 1928 H. H. Asquith (1852-1928) Died 15 February 1928, aged 75 Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916. His government passed the Parliament Act 1911 and old-age pensions, and it took Britain into the First World War. He was created Earl of Oxford and Asquith in 1925.
• 1853 – 1928 Hendrik Lorentz (1853-1928) Died 4 February 1928, aged 74 Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on the Zeeman effect. The Lorentz transformation equations became central to Einstein's special relativity. He also led the engineering studies for the Zuiderzee Works.
• 1854 – 1928 Leos Janacek (1854-1928) Died 12 August 1928, aged 74 Czech composer whose operas include Jenufa, Katya Kabanova and The Cunning Little Vixen. He based much of his music on the rhythms of Moravian folk song and speech. Most of his best-known works date from his last decade.
• 1857 – 1928 Hermann Sudermann (1857-1928) Died 21 November 1928, aged 71 German naturalist playwright and novelist, author of the play Heimat and the novel Frau Sorge. He was one of the most performed dramatists in Germany around 1900. Several of his works were adapted for film.
• 1858 – 1928 Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) Died 14 June 1928, aged 69 British suffragette leader who founded the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903. Its militant campaign was central to winning votes for women. She died weeks before the Equal Franchise Act gave women the vote on equal terms with men.
• 1861 – 1928 Douglas Haig (1861-1928) Died 29 January 1928, aged 66 British field marshal who commanded the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front from 1915 to 1918. He directed the battles of the Somme and Passchendaele and the final Hundred Days Offensive. After the war he helped found the Royal British Legion.
• 1861 – 1928 Italo Svevo (1861-1928) Died 13 September 1928, aged 66 Italian novelist from Trieste, author of Zeno's Conscience. He gained recognition late in life, partly through the advocacy of his friend James Joyce. He died after a car accident.
• 1862 – 1928 Andrew Fisher (1862-1928) Died 22 October 1928, aged 66 Scottish-born Labor politician who was Prime Minister of Australia three times between 1908 and 1915. His governments founded the Commonwealth Bank and the Royal Australian Navy. He later served as Australian High Commissioner in London.
• 1864 – 1928 Wilhelm Wien (1864-1928) Died 30 August 1928, aged 64 German physicist who won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Physics for his laws of heat radiation. Wien's displacement law relates the temperature of a black body to its peak wavelength. His work led toward Planck's quantum theory.
• 1865 – 1928 Lala Lajpat Rai (1865-1928) Died 17 November 1928, aged 63 Indian nationalist leader known as Punjab Kesari. He was part of the Lal Bal Pal trio of Congress radicals. He died weeks after police beat him while he led a protest against the Simon Commission in Lahore.
• 1867 – 1928 Vicente Blasco Ibanez (1867-1928) Died 28 January 1928, aged 60 Spanish novelist and republican politician. His novel The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse became an international bestseller and a hit 1921 film. He died in exile in Menton, France.
• 1868 – 1928 Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) Died 10 December 1928, aged 60 Scottish architect and designer, a leading figure of the Glasgow Style. His best-known building is the Glasgow School of Art. His furniture and interiors influenced European modernism.
• 1868 – 1928 Theodore William Richards (1868-1928) Died 2 April 1928, aged 60 American chemist who won the 1914 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He was the first American to receive it. He made highly precise measurements of the atomic weights of many elements.
• 1871 – 1928 Stjepan Radic (1871-1928) Died 8 August 1928, aged 57 Croatian politician who founded and led the Croatian Peasant Party. He was the main opponent of Serbian centralism in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. He died of wounds from a shooting in the Belgrade parliament.
• 1872 – 1928 Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) Died 18 June 1928, aged 55 Norwegian polar explorer who led the first expedition to reach the South Pole in 1911 and first navigated the Northwest Passage. He flew over the North Pole in the airship Norge in 1926. He disappeared over the Barents Sea while flying to search for the crashed airship Italia.
• 1873 – 1928 Alexander Bogdanov (1873-1928) Died 7 April 1928, aged 54 Russian physician, philosopher, Bolshevik co-founder and science-fiction writer. He founded the Proletkult movement and wrote the utopian novel Red Star. He died after a blood transfusion experiment he performed on himself.
• 1874 – 1928 Max Scheler (1874-1928) Died 19 May 1928, aged 53 German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics and philosophical anthropology. His major works include Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. He influenced Edith Stein and Karol Wojtyla.
• 1875 – 1928 Zhang Zuolin (1875-1928) Died 4 June 1928, aged 53 Chinese warlord known as the Old Marshal, who ruled Manchuria and controlled the Beiyang government in Beijing. He died when Japanese Kwantung Army officers bombed his train. His son Zhang Xueliang succeeded him.
• 1876 – 1928 Hideyo Noguchi (1876-1928) Died 21 May 1928, aged 51 Japanese bacteriologist at the Rockefeller Institute. He identified the syphilis bacterium in the brains of patients with progressive paralysis. He died of yellow fever in Accra while researching the disease.
• 1878 – 1928 Pyotr Wrangel (1878-1928) Died 25 April 1928, aged 49 Russian general who commanded the White Army in southern Russia in the last phase of the Civil War. In 1920 he organised the evacuation of about 150,000 soldiers and civilians from Crimea. He died in exile in Brussels.
• 1880 – 1928 Alvaro Obregon (1880-1928) Died 17 July 1928, aged 48 Mexican revolutionary general and President of Mexico from 1920 to 1924. He had just been re-elected president when a Catholic militant, Jose de Leon Toral, shot him at a restaurant in Mexico City. His death led Plutarco Elias Calles to found the ruling National Revolutionary Party.
• 1882 – 1928 Arnold Rothstein (1882-1928) Died 6 November 1928, aged 46 New York racketeer and gambler who helped organise American organised crime in the Prohibition era. He was widely linked to the fixing of the 1919 World Series. He was shot during a poker game and died two days later.
• 1928 – 1967 Che Guevara (1928-1967) Died 9 October 1967, aged 39 The Argentine-born revolutionary and guerrilla leader was captured by the Bolivian army, with CIA assistance, while attempting to spark a continental revolution. He was executed the following day, and his image later became a globally recognized symbol of rebellion.
• 1928 – 2022 Estelle Harris (1928-2022) Died 2 April 2022, aged 93 American actress known for Seinfeld and as the voice of Mrs Potato Head in the Toy Story films.
• 1928 – 1971 Georgy Dobrovolsky (1928-1971) Died 30 June 1971, aged 43 Georgy Dobrovolsky commanded the Soyuz 11 mission and served as commander of the Salyut 1 space station crew. He died along with his crewmates during reentry when their capsule depressurized. He remains one of only three humans known to have died in space.
• 1928 – 1972 Jigme Dorji Wangchuck (1928-1972) Died 21 July 1972, aged 44 Wangchuck ruled as the third King of Bhutan and began modernizing the isolated Himalayan kingdom, opening it to foreign relations and development aid for the first time. He established Bhutan's first National Assembly and legal reforms. He died of heart failure while traveling in Kenya.
• 1928 – 2025 Martin E. Marty (1928-2025) Died 25 February 2025, aged 97 American historian of religion whose three-volume Modern American Religion traced religious currents in their wider cultural setting.
• 1928 Penicillin The First Antibiotic The life-saving discovery of the first effective antibiotic medicine.
• 1928 Penicillin discovered Penicillin discovered Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, the world's first antibiotic, revolutionising the treatment of bacterial infections.
• 1928 – 1962 Yves Klein (1928-1962) Died 6 June 1962, aged 34 French artist Yves Klein, known for his monochrome paintings using a shade he patented as International Klein Blue, died of a heart attack on June 6, 1962. He was a key figure in the transition from earlier avant-garde movements to Pop Art and conceptual art. His work "Leap into the Void" remains one of the most iconic images in modern art.
• 1928 – 1979 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928-1979) Died 4 April 1979, aged 51 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, former President and Prime Minister of Pakistan, was executed by hanging after being convicted of authorizing a political murder, a trial widely regarded as a judicial farce. He had been overthrown in a 1977 military coup by General Zia-ul-Haq. His execution on 4 April 1979 remains one of the most controversial episodes in Pakistani history.
• 1928 Trotsky exiled to Alma-Ata Stalin banishes his chief rival to Central Asia Leon Trotsky, expelled from the Communist Party in 1927, was forcibly deported from Moscow to Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan. Other leaders of the Left Opposition were exiled at the same time. Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929.
• 1928 – 2014 Eduard Shevardnadze (1928-2014) Died 7 July 2014, aged 86 Eduard Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign minister under Mikhail Gorbachev who later served as president of independent Georgia, died in Tbilisi. As foreign minister he was a key architect of the end of the Cold War. He was ousted as Georgian president in the 2003 Rose Revolution.
• 1928 Dirac equation published Relativistic wave equation for the electron Paul Dirac published a relativistic quantum equation for the electron in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. The equation accounted for electron spin and predicted the existence of antimatter. The positron was discovered in 1932.
• 1928 Simon Commission arrives in India All-British constitutional commission meets nationwide boycott The Indian Statutory Commission under Sir John Simon landed in Bombay to review India's constitution. It had no Indian members, and it met hartals and "Simon Go Back" protests across the country. A police charge on a protest in Lahore fatally injured Lala Lajpat Rai.
• 1928 First transatlantic television transmission John Logie Baird sends images from London to New York John Logie Baird transmitted television images by shortwave radio from London to Hartsdale, New York. It was the first transatlantic television broadcast. The demonstration drew wide press attention to mechanical television.
• 1928 1928 Winter Olympics II Winter Games - St. Moritz First games held in a different nation than the Summer Games. Winner: Norway.
• 1928 Japanese general election First election under universal male suffrage Japan held its first general election after the 1925 law extending the vote to all men aged 25 and over. The Rikken Seiyukai won the most seats by a narrow margin. Several proletarian party candidates entered the Diet, which led to a mass arrest of communists weeks later.
• 1928 – 2014 Ariel Sharon (1928-2014) Died 11 January 2014, aged 85 Ariel Sharon, the Israeli general and prime minister who withdrew Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2005, died in Israel after eight years in a coma following a stroke. He was a dominant and divisive figure in Israeli politics and military history for decades. His coma began in 2006 while still in office.
• 1928 – 2017 Fats Domino (1928-2017) Died 24 October 2017, aged 89 American pianist and singer who was one of the first stars of rock and roll, selling more records in the 1950s than any artist besides Elvis Presley. His hits included "Blueberry Hill" and "Ain't That a Shame." He remained closely associated with his native New Orleans throughout his life.
• 1928 Raman effect discovered C. V. Raman observes inelastic scattering of light In Calcutta, C. V. Raman and K. S. Krishnan found that light scattered by a substance includes wavelengths shifted from the incident light. The discovery earned Raman the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics. India marks the date as National Science Day.
• 1928 Muslim Brotherhood founded Hassan al-Banna founds the society in Ismailia Schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna founded the Society of the Muslim Brothers in Ismailia, Egypt. It became one of the most influential Islamist movements of the 20th century. It spread across the Arab world.
• 1928 – 1998 James Earl Ray (1928-1998) Died 23 April 1998, aged 70 James Earl Ray, convicted of assassinating civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, died in prison on 23 April 1998 while serving a 99-year sentence. He had spent decades unsuccessfully seeking a retrial, claiming he had been framed.
• 1928 – 2016 Edward Albee (1928-2016) Died 16 September 2016, aged 88 Albee was an American playwright best known for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and other works exploring the darker undercurrents of American domestic life. He won three Pulitzer Prizes for Drama over his career. His plays remain widely staged and studied.
• 1928 St. Francis Dam collapse Dam failure floods the Santa Clara River valley The St. Francis Dam in northern Los Angeles County failed just before midnight. The flood that followed killed more than 400 people. It was one of the worst American civil engineering disasters of the 20th century and ended William Mulholland's career.
• 1928 – 2003 Fred Rogers (1928-2003) Died 27 February 2003, aged 74 Fred Rogers created and hosted the children's television programme 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood', which ran on US public television from 1968 to 2001. An ordained Presbyterian minister, he addressed subjects such as death, divorce and anger in a calm, direct way. He died of stomach cancer.
• 1928 – 2025 Jim Lovell (1928-2025) Died 7 August 2025, aged 97 American astronaut of the Gemini and Apollo programmes who commanded Apollo 13, bringing a crippled spacecraft home from the Moon in 1970.
• 1928 – 2017 Zbigniew Brzezinski (1928-2017) Died 26 May 2017, aged 89 Polish-American political scientist who served as US National Security Advisor under President Jimmy Carter, shaping American Cold War strategy toward the Soviet Union. He was an influential foreign policy thinker for decades after leaving government. He died after a brief illness.
• 1928 – 2016 Gordie Howe (1928-2016) Died 10 June 2016, aged 88 Howe was a Canadian ice hockey player who spent 26 seasons in the NHL, mostly with the Detroit Red Wings, and was nicknamed "Mr. Hockey." He remains one of the sport's all-time leading scorers. He continued playing professionally into his 50s.
• 1928 – 1991 Serge Gainsbourg (1928-1991) Died 2 March 1991, aged 62 French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg died of a heart attack in Paris. His provocative and genre-spanning songwriting, including "Je t'aime... moi non plus," made him one of the most influential figures in French popular music. His funeral drew a public address from President Francois Mitterrand.
• 1928 – 2014 Maya Angelou American poet and memoirist Angelou wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, reflecting on identity, racism, and resilience.
• 1928 – 2025 James Watson (1928-2025) Died 6 November 2025, aged 97 American geneticist who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA.
• 1928 – 2014 James Garner (1928-2014) Died 19 July 2014, aged 86 James Garner, the American actor known for the television series "Maverick" and "The Rockford Files" and films including "The Great Escape," died in Los Angeles. He was known for his affable, wisecracking screen persona. His career spanned television and film for over five decades.
• 1928 – 2024 Ethel Kennedy (1928-2024) Died 10 October 2024, aged 96 American advocate for social justice and human rights, widow of Robert F. Kennedy.
• 1928 Oxford English Dictionary completed Final fascicle of the first edition issued The final part of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published, about seventy years after the project began. The completed work covered more than 400,000 words and phrases in ten volumes. It remains the standard historical dictionary of English.
• 1928 – 2014 Shirley Temple (1928-2014) Died 10 February 2014, aged 85 Shirley Temple, the child star who became Hollywood's biggest box-office draw of the 1930s, died at her home in California. She later served as a US diplomat under her married name, Shirley Temple Black. Her curly-haired image remains one of the most recognizable in film history.
• 1928 1928 World Snooker Championship Joe Davis Title 2 Winner: Joe Davis; Runner-up: Fred Lawrence. Score: 16–13.
• 1928 Jinan incident Clash between Nationalist and Japanese troops in Shandong Fighting broke out in Jinan between Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition forces and Japanese troops deployed to protect Japanese residents. Thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed. The incident deepened Sino-Japanese hostility.
• 1928 – 2023 Burt Bacharach American Songwriter & Composer American composer, songwriter, record producer and pianist, widely regarded as one of the most important figures of 20th-century popular music. Working primarily with lyricist Hal David, he wrote dozens of hit songs including Walk on By, I Say a Little Prayer and Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head. He won six Grammy Awards, three Academy Awards, and charted 73 songs in the American Top 40.
• 1928 1928 Summer Olympics IX Olympiad - Amsterdam First time the Olympic flame was lit. Winner: USA.
• 1928 Shakhty Trial Soviet show trial of mining engineers for sabotage Fifty-three engineers and technicians from the Shakhty coal region were tried in Moscow for alleged sabotage and conspiracy with foreign powers. Most were convicted, and five were executed. The trial set the pattern for later Stalinist show trials.
• 1928 German federal election Social Democrats win the most seats The Social Democratic Party gained heavily in the Reichstag election and formed a grand coalition under Hermann Mueller. The Nazi Party won just 2.6 percent of the vote. It was the last Weimar election before the Great Depression.
• 1928 – 2002 Rosemary Clooney (1928-2002) Died 29 June 2002, aged 74 Rosemary Clooney was an American pop and jazz singer whose 1951 hit 'Come On-a My House' launched a career of records, radio and film, including a lead role in White Christmas. A breakdown and personal troubles interrupted her career in the late 1960s before a jazz-focused comeback. She was the aunt of the actor George Clooney.
• 1928 – 2016 William Trevor (1928-2016) Died 20 November 2016, aged 88 Trevor was an Irish writer regarded as one of the leading short story writers in the English language. He won the Whitbread Prize three times and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times. His work often depicted quiet lives in provincial Ireland and England.
• 1928 Airship Italia disaster Nobile's polar airship crashes on the Arctic ice Returning from the North Pole, Umberto Nobile's airship Italia crashed on the pack ice north of Svalbard. The survivors spent weeks on the ice before a Soviet icebreaker rescued them. Roald Amundsen died while flying to join the search.
• 1928 – 2019 Agnes Varda (1928-2019) Died 29 March 2019, aged 90 Agnes Varda was a French film director and photographer often called the grandmother of the French New Wave. Her films, including Cleo from 5 to 7 and Vagabond, were celebrated for their innovative style and social conscience. She received an honorary Academy Award in 2017.
• 1928 First trans-Pacific flight The Southern Cross flies from California to Australia Charles Kingsford Smith and his crew flew the Fokker monoplane Southern Cross from Oakland, California, to Brisbane, stopping in Hawaii and Fiji. It was the first flight across the Pacific. The journey covered about 11,600 kilometres.
• 1928 French Open 1928 Men: Henri Cochet · Women: Helen Wills First French Open at the new Stade Roland Garros, built to host the Davis Cup.
• 1928 Huanggutun incident Japanese officers assassinate warlord Zhang Zuolin Officers of Japan's Kwantung Army bombed Zhang Zuolin's train near Shenyang as he withdrew from Beijing. Zhang died hours later. The plot backfired when his son Zhang Xueliang aligned Manchuria with the Nationalist government.
• 1928 – 2024 Ruth Westheimer (1928-2024) Died 12 July 2024, aged 96 German-American sex therapist and broadcaster known to millions as Dr Ruth.
• 1928 – 2024 Gustavo Gutierrez (1928-2024) Died 22 October 2024, aged 96 Peruvian theologian and Dominican priest regarded as the father of liberation theology.
• 1928 – 2012 Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) Died 8 May 2012, aged 83 American writer and illustrator best known for the children's book "Where the Wild Things Are." His work reshaped what children's literature could depict emotionally.
• 1928 Amelia Earhart crosses the Atlantic by air First woman to fly across the Atlantic Amelia Earhart flew from Trepassey, Newfoundland, to Burry Port, Wales, as a passenger aboard the Fokker seaplane Friendship, piloted by Wilmer Stultz. The flight made her an international celebrity. She flew the Atlantic solo in 1932.
• 1928 – 2025 Jean-Marie Le Pen (1928-2025) Died 7 January 2025, aged 96 French nationalist who founded the National Front and led it from 1972 to 2011, the main right-wing opposition to France's mainstream conservatives for four decades.
• 1928 Shooting in the Yugoslav parliament Deputy Punisa Racic opens fire in the Skupstina Montenegrin Serb deputy Punisa Racic shot five Croatian Peasant Party deputies during a session in Belgrade. Two died at the scene, and party leader Stjepan Radic died of his wounds weeks later. The crisis led King Alexander to impose a royal dictatorship in January 1929.
• 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover published D. H. Lawrence's novel privately printed in Florence D. H. Lawrence had his last novel privately printed in Florence because it could not be published openly in Britain or the United States. Its sexual frankness kept it banned for decades. Penguin's acquittal in the 1960 obscenity trial became a landmark in British censorship law.
• 1928 Equal Franchise Act British women gain the vote on equal terms with men The Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act received royal assent. It lowered the voting age for women from 30 to 21 and gave them the vote on the same terms as men. About five million more women became eligible to vote.
• 1928 Sliced bread first sold Otto Rohwedder's bread-slicing machine enters commercial use The Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri began selling bread sliced by Otto Frederick Rohwedder's machine. Pre-sliced bread spread quickly across the United States. It gave rise to the phrase "the best thing since sliced bread".
• 1928 – 1978 Bob Crane (1928-1978) Died 29 June 1978, aged 49 Crane was an American actor best known for starring in the television sitcom "Hogan's Heroes". He was found bludgeoned to death in his apartment in Scottsdale, Arizona, in a murder that remains officially unsolved.
• 1928 – 1999 Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) Died 7 March 1999, aged 70 Stanley Kubrick was an American-born filmmaker who directed landmark films including 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, and The Shining. He worked primarily from England for most of his career and was known for his meticulous, perfectionist approach to filmmaking. He died in his sleep days after completing Eyes Wide Shut.
• 1928 Chrysler acquires Dodge Brothers Chrysler becomes one of the Big Three Walter Chrysler bought Dodge Brothers from the investment bank Dillon, Read and Co. The merger greatly expanded Chrysler's manufacturing and dealer network. Chrysler had launched its Plymouth and DeSoto brands earlier the same year.
• 1928 – 1987 Andy Warhol Pop Art · USA Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American Pop Art artist who blurred the line between fine art and commercial culture. His Campbell's Soup Cans and Marilyn Monroe prints made him the defining artist of the 1960s.
• 1928 – 2024 Herbert Kroemer (1928-2024) Died 8 March 2024, aged 95 German-born physicist who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize for Physics for semiconductor heterostructures.
• 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact signed Nations renounce war as an instrument of national policy The General Treaty for Renunciation of War was signed in Paris by fifteen nations, led by the United States and France. It was named after US Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand. The pact later provided a legal basis for the crimes-against-peace charges at the Nuremberg trials.
• 1928 – 2002 James Coburn (1928-2002) Died 18 November 2002, aged 74 James Coburn was a lean, grinning American actor who broke through in ensemble westerns and war films such as The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape before leading roles in the 1960s spy spoofs beginning with Our Man Flint. Severe rheumatoid arthritis limited his work for years. He won a supporting-actor Oscar late in life for Affliction in 1999.
• 1928 The Threepenny Opera premieres Brecht and Weill's play with music opens in Berlin Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Die Dreigroschenoper opened at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin. It became one of the biggest theatrical hits of the Weimar Republic. Its song "Mack the Knife" became a standard worldwide.
• 1928 Zog I proclaimed King of the Albanians Albania becomes a kingdom President Ahmet Zogu declared Albania a monarchy and took the throne as Zog I. He ruled until the Italian invasion of 1939. The kingdom depended heavily on Italian loans and influence.
• 1928 Okeechobee hurricane Category 4 storm devastates Puerto Rico and Florida A powerful hurricane hit Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, and then made landfall near West Palm Beach, Florida. Storm surge from Lake Okeechobee drowned about 2,500 people in Florida, most of them Black migrant farm workers. It prompted the construction of the Herbert Hoover Dike.
• 1928 – 1998 Roddy McDowall (1928-1998) English-American actor, a child star of How Green Was My Valley, later Cornelius in Planet of the Apes.
• 1928 – 2017 Adam West (1928-2017) Died 9 June 2017, aged 88 American actor best known for playing the title role in the 1960s television series Batman, a campy portrayal that became iconic. He later found a new generation of fans voicing Mayor Adam West on Family Guy. He died of leukemia.
• 1928 – 2024 James Lawson (1928-2024) Died 9 June 2024, aged 95 American civil rights activist who devised the movement's strategy of nonviolent direct action.
• 1928 Galvin Manufacturing Corporation founded The company later known as Motorola is established Brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin founded the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in Chicago to make battery eliminators for radios. The company introduced the Motorola car radio in 1930. It took the Motorola name in 1947.
• 1928 – 2016 Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) Died 2 July 2016, aged 87 Wiesel was a Romanian-born American writer and Holocaust survivor whose memoir Night became one of the most widely read accounts of the Holocaust. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for his work as a human rights advocate. He testified before Congress and world leaders on genocide and human rights throughout his life.
• 1928 – 1994 George Peppard (1928-1994) American actor, star of Breakfast at Tiffany's and leader of The A-Team.
• 1928 – 1973 Laurence Harvey (1928-1973) Lithuanian-born British actor, star of Room at the Top and The Manchurian Candidate.
• 1928 Soviet First Five-Year Plan begins Stalin launches forced industrialisation The Soviet Union began its first Five-Year Plan, which aimed at rapid growth in heavy industry under central planning. The plan went together with the forced collectivisation of agriculture. It marked the end of the New Economic Policy.
• 1928 Opus Dei founded Josemaria Escriva founds a Catholic lay organisation Spanish priest Josemaria Escriva founded Opus Dei in Madrid. The organisation teaches that ordinary work and daily life can be a path to holiness. In 1982 it became the Catholic Church's only personal prelature.
• 1928 Chiang Kai-shek becomes Chairman of the Nationalist Government Chiang takes formal leadership of the Republic of China After the Northern Expedition captured Beijing, Chiang Kai-shek became Chairman of the Nationalist Government in Nanjing. The regime began a period of one-party tutelage under the Kuomintang. Nanjing became the national capital.
• 1928 – 2026 Zhu Rongji Premier of China (1998-2003) Chinese politician and economic reformer who served as Premier of China from 1998 to 2003. Sharp-tongued and impatient, he earned the nickname 'Madman Zhu' for his demanding style and willingness to confront corruption and inefficiency. He overhauled China's state-owned enterprises at the cost of tens of millions of jobs, tamed double-digit inflation, steered the economy through the Asian financial crisis, and masterminded China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 — a decision that helped transform China into the world's second-largest economy.
• 1928 Herbert Hoover elected President of the United States Republican landslide over Al Smith Herbert Hoover beat Democrat Al Smith, the first Catholic nominee of a major party, and won 444 electoral votes. Hoover took several states of the traditionally Democratic South. He took office in March 1929, months before the Wall Street Crash.
• 1928 – 2020 Ennio Morricone (1928-2020) Died 6 July 2020, aged 91 Ennio Morricone was an Italian composer who scored more than 400 films, including Sergio Leone's "Dollars" trilogy and Once Upon a Time in the West, and won an Academy Award for The Hateful Eight. He died on 6 July 2020 from complications of a fall.
• 1928 Enthronement of Emperor Hirohito Formal coronation ceremonies held in Kyoto Emperor Hirohito was formally enthroned at the Kyoto Imperial Palace, two years after he succeeded his father. The ceremonies marked the start of the Showa era in ritual terms. His reign lasted until 1989.
• 1928 Sinking of the SS Vestris British liner founders off Virginia The passenger liner Vestris sank in a storm about 200 miles off Hampton Roads, Virginia, on a voyage from New York to South America. About 111 people died. The inquiries that followed helped shape later international rules on safety at sea.
• 1928 Steamboat Willie premieres Mickey Mouse's debut in a synchronised-sound cartoon Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie premiered at the Colony Theatre in New York. It was one of the first cartoons with fully synchronised sound, and it made Mickey Mouse famous. The film set up Disney's studio as a leader in animation.
• 1928 Ravel's Bolero premieres Ballet score debuts at the Paris Opera Maurice Ravel's Bolero premiered at the Paris Opera as a ballet commissioned by Ida Rubinstein. The piece builds a single repeated melody over an unchanging snare-drum rhythm. It became one of the most frequently performed orchestral works of the century.
• 1928 – 2007 Karlheinz Stockhausen Electronic music pioneer German avant-garde composer who pioneered electronic and serial music. His work Gesang der Jünglinge is a landmark of electronic composition.
• 1928 Banana Massacre Colombian troops fire on striking United Fruit workers Colombian soldiers opened fire on striking United Fruit Company workers gathered in the town square of Cienaga. Estimates of the dead range from dozens to more than a thousand. The massacre is fictionalised in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.
• 1928 – 2024 Bruce Ames (1928-2024) Died 5 October 2024, aged 95 American biochemist who developed the Ames test for chemical mutagens.
• 1928 – 1982 Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) Died 2 March 1982, aged 53 American science fiction author whose novels inspired the film Blade Runner. He died of heart failure following a stroke, months before the film's release.
• 1928 Northeast Flag Replacement Manchuria submits to the Nationalist government Zhang Xueliang raised the Nationalist flag across Manchuria and pledged allegiance to the Nanjing government. The move nominally reunified China under the Kuomintang. It ended the Northern Expedition and the Beiyang era.
• 1928 – 2008 Bo Diddley (1928-2008) Died 2 June 2008, aged 79 American singer and guitarist whose rhythmic "Bo Diddley beat" became a foundational building block of rock and roll. He influenced generations of musicians from Buddy Holly to the Rolling Stones.