Today in history

On Oct. 28, 1636, Harvard College was founded in Massachusetts. In 1793 Eli Whitney applied for a patent for his cotton gin. (Six months later, it was granted.)

In 1886 the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France, was dedicated in New York Harbor by President Cleveland. In 1897 Edith Head, the Oscar-winning costume designer, was born Edith Claire Posener in San Bernardino, Calif. In 1903 novelist Evelyn Waugh was born in London. In 1909 painter Francis Bacon was born in Dublin. In 1914 Dr. Jonas Salk, the medical researcher who developed the first safe and effective vaccine against polio, was born in New York. In 1919 Congress enacted the Volstead Act, which provided for enforcement of Prohibition, over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto. In 1922 fascism came to Italy as Benito Mussolini took control of the government. In 1936 President Franklin Roosevelt rededicated the Statue of Liberty on its 50th anniversary. In 1940 Italy invaded Greece during World War II.

In 1955 Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp. co-founder and chairman, was born William Henry Gates III in Seattle. In 1958 the Roman Catholic patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, was elected pope, taking the name John XXIII. In 1962 the Cuban missile crisis eased as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev said his government would pull its nuclear missiles out of Cuba. In 1965 Pope Paul VI issued a decree absolving Jews of collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. In 1967 actress Julia Roberts was born in Smyrna, Ga. In 1976 John Ehrlichman, a top aide to former President Richard Nixon, entered a federal prison camp in Safford, Ariz., to begin serving his sentence for Watergaterelated convictions.

In 1980 President Jimmy Carter and Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan faced off in a nationally broadcast, 90-minute debate in Cleveland. In 1989 the Oakland A’s won the earthquake-interrupted World Series, completing a four-game sweep of the San Francisco Giants. In 1995 the Atlanta Braves defeated the Cleveland Indians, 1-0, to win the World Series in Game 6.

In 1996 comic Morey Amsterdam, a co-star of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” died in Los Angeles; he was 81.

In 2000 the party of moderate Ibrahim Rugova won Kosovo’s municipal elections. Also in 2000 David Trimble, leader of Northern Ireland’s biggest Protestant party, narrowly won a crucial party battle, keeping alive the province’s power-sharing government. In 2001 United Airlines replaced embattled chairman and chief executive James Goodwin with board member John Creighton. In 2002 American diplomat Laurence Foley was assassinated in front of his house in Amman, Jordan, in the first such attack on a U.S. diplomat in decades. In 2003 firefighters beat back flames on Los Angeles’ doorstep, saving hundreds of homes in the city’s San Fernando Valley from California’s deadliest wildfires in more than a decade. Also in 2003 the Senate confirmed Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2004 insurgents executed 11 Iraqi soldiers and declared on an Islamic militant Web site that Iraqi fighters would avenge “the blood” of women and children killed in U.S. strikes on the guerrilla stronghold of Fallujah.