NOW & THEN
OCTOBER 28
1492: Christopher Columbus discovered Cuba and claimed it for Spain.
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.
1746: The cities of Lima and Callau, in Peru, were destroyed by an earthquake which killed 18,000.
1858: RH Macy & Co opened their first store, on Sixth Avenue in New Yoek. 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.
1914: George Eastman announced the invention of a colour photograph process to be marketed by his Eastman Kodak Co.
1918: Czechoslovakia ganed independence as Austria-hungary broke up.
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 coal dust 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.
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.
1990: A special Soviet envoy failed to persuade Saddam Hussein to withdraw Iraqi forces peaceably from Kuwait.
2003: The Church of Scotland ended centuries of male domination by appointing Dr Alison Elliot the first female Moderator of the General Assembly.
2007: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner became first woman elected president of Argentina.