TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS FRIDAY, APRIL 28, 2017

On this day in history:

0357 - Constantius II visited Rome for the first time. 1282 - Villagers in Palermo led a revolt against French rule in Sicily.

1789 - A mutiny on the British ship 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.

1902 - A revolution broke out in the Dominican Republic. 1910 - First night air flight was performed by Claude Grahame-White in England. 1916 - The British declared martial law throughout Ireland. 1919 - The League of Nations was founded.

1920 - Azerbaijan joined the USSR.

1932 - The yellow fever vaccine for humans was announced. 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 began in Peru and took 101 days to complete the crossing of the Pacific Ocean.

1949 - Melbourne is announced as the host city for the Games of the XVI Olympiad.

1953 - French troops evacuated northern Laos.

1962 - In the Sahara Desert of Algeria, a team led by Red Adair used explosives to put out the well fire known as the Devil’s Cigarette Lighter. The fire was caused by a pipe rupture on November 6, 1961. 1967 - Muhammad Ali refused induction into the US Army and was stripped of boxing title. He cited religious grounds for his refusal.

1969 - Charles de Gaulle resigned as president of France.

1996 - Port Arthur, Australia, becomes the scene of an horrific massacre of innocent men, women and children. 1997 - A worldwide treaty to ban chemical weapons took effect. Russia and other countries such as Iraq and North Korea did not sign. 2008 - India set a world record when it sent 10 satellites into orbit from a single launch.