On This Day: Major World Events of October 28
October 28 is the 301st day of the year, and the date carries major events in the history of many countries, from the dedication of the Statue of Liberty and the founding of Harvard College to Czechoslovakia's declaration of independence and the end of the Cuban missile crisis. This column records them year by year, stating facts only.
In 1636, in the United States, the legislature of the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed an act establishing Harvard College in Cambridge, which later became Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. In 1886, in the United States, the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France, was dedicated on Liberty Island in New York Harbor at a ceremony led by President Grover Cleveland; the statue was designed by French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. In 1918, Czechoslovakia proclaimed its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the First World War, and October 28 later became a national holiday in Czechia. In 1919, in the United States, Congress passed the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson's veto, providing the legal framework for Prohibition, which lasted until 1933.
In 1929, in the United States, the New York stock market fell about 13 percent in a single day remembered as Black Monday, followed by further steep declines on Black Tuesday, a crash that became one of the opening chapters of the Great Depression. In 1940, Italy invaded Greece, whose forces then organized resistance in the border mountains; the date is commemorated in Greece as Ohi Day. In 1962, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced he had ordered the dismantling of Soviet missile bases in Cuba, bringing the 13-day Cuban missile crisis to an end.
Other events on this date include: in 1726, Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels was first published in London, in the United Kingdom; in 1793, American inventor Eli Whitney applied for a patent for the cotton gin; in 1858, Rowland Hussey Macy opened his first New York store at Sixth Avenue and 14th Street in the United States; in 1958, the Roman Catholic Church elected a new pope, Venice patriarch Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who took the name John XXIII; and in 2021, the American company Facebook announced it was rebranding itself as Meta.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 美国纽约自由女神像（资料图）。Dietmar Rabich 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / The Statue of Liberty in New York (file photo). Photo by Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
