NOW & THEN
28 OCTOBER
1492: Christopher Columbus discovered Cuba and claimed it for Spain.
1538: The first university in the New world – the Universidade Santo Tomas de Aquinas – in Santo Domingo on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, was founded.
1562: Battle of Corrichie, with defeat and death of the Earl of Huntly in arms against Queen Mary.
1740: Ivan VI became Tsar of Russia.
1858: RH Macy & Co opened their first store, on Sixth Avenue in New York. the first day’s gross receipts were $11.06.
1880: Doctor Henry Faulds, a Scots medical missionary working in Tokyo, published a letter in Nature which produced the first evidence that fingerprints taken directly from suspected persons and prints left at the scene of a crime could be used as medicolegal proof of guilt or innocence.
1886: New York’s first tickertape parade took place as the Statue of Liberty – Enlightening the World, to give it its full name – was dedicated by president Grover Cleveland as a monument to democracy to mark the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. France paid for the statue, the United States for the pedestal.
1893: The Royal Navy’s first destroyer, HMS Havock, went on trials.
1893: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky conducted the first performance of his “Pathetique” Symphony.
1914: George Eastman announced the invention of a colour photograph process to be marketed by his Eastman Kodak Co.
1922: Benito Mussolini took control of Italy’s government.
1939: Paisley-born Spitfire pilot Archie Mckellar shot down the first German aircraft to be brought down over Scotland – a Heinkel 111, which came down near the village of Humbie, East Lothian, while it was on its way to attack Royal Navy ships anchored near the Forth Bridge.
1939: An explosion of coaldust at the Valleyfield Colliery, near Rosyth, Fife, killed 35 miners. 1940: Italy invaded Greece. 1954: The Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Ernest Hemingway.
1958: The Queen’s speech at the state opening of parliament was televised for the first time.
1962: Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev said he had ordered withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba.
1965: Parliament passed a bill abolishing the death penalty for murder.
1971: The House of Commons voted in favour of Britain entering the Common Market by a majority of 112.
1988: Prince Charles shocked modern architects by referring to the British Library as looking like an academy for secret police and the National Theatre as resembling a nuclear power station in the middle of London.
2003: The Church of Scotland ended centuries of male domination by appointing Dr Alison Elliot as the first female Moderator of the General Assembly.
2007: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner became the first woman elected president of Argentina.
BIRTHDAYS
Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft and philanthropist, 64; Sandy Clark, Scottish football coach and former player, 63; Carl Davis CBE, conductor and film music composer, 83; David Dimbleby, broadcaster, 81; Matt Smith, actor (Doctor Who), 37; Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth DBE, singer, 92; Alastair Mcdonald, Scottish radio and television presenter, folk singer, 78; Dame Joan Ann Plowright, the Baroness Olivier, DBE, actress, 90; Julia Roberts, film actress, 52; Joaquin Phoenix, actor, 45; Hank Marvin, lead guitarist with The Shadows, 78; Bernie Ecclestone, chief executive of the Formula One Group, 89.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1794 Robert Liston, Linlithgow-born surgeon, carried out the first operation with the aid of an anaesthetic in Britain; 1903 Evelyn Waugh, novelist and travel writer; 1909 Francis Bacon, artist; 1922 Cliff Hanley, writer; 1925 Ian Hamilton Finlay CBE, Scottish poet, writer, artist and gardener; 1928 Lawrie Reilly, Scottish international footballer.
Deaths: 1704 John Locke, philosopher; 1792 John Smeaton, civil engineer and lighthouse designer; 1840 John Thomson, Edinburgh-born landscape painter; 1998 Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate 1984-98; 2010 Gerard Kelly, Scottish comic actor.