ON OCTOBER 28 ...
In 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 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 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 1886 In 1965 Pope Paul VI issued a decree absolving Jews of collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
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, 90minute debate in Cleveland.
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 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. Also in 2004 Boston Red Sox fans turned out by the tens of thousands near historic Fenway Park to celebrate their World Series champion team, the city’s first since 1918.
In 2005 Vice President Dick Cheney’s top adviser, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, resigned after he was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements in the CIA leak investigation.
In 2013 the U.S. military dedicated a national monument to combat canines at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. The 9-foot-tall bronze statue features a handler and four dogs. Also in 2013 an SUV plowed into tourists and police, killing five people and injuring 38, at Tiananmen Square in Beijing in what Chinese officials called a “terrorist attack.”
In 2014 an unmanned rocket exploded on the launch pad in Virginia, marking the first accident since NASA turned to private operators to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.
In 2015 former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert pleaded guilty to a felony count of illegally withdrawing cash; it was later determined that the once powerful Illinois Republican was paying to cover up his sexual abuse of a student from decades ago when he was a wrestling coach at Yorkville High School.