This Day in History

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May 28

Today is Menstrual Hygiene Day. Please make a note of it.

1588 – The Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, heading for the English Channel. (It will take until May 30 for all ships to leave port.)

1644 – Bolton Massacre by Royalist troops under the command of James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby.

1754 – French and Indian War: In the first engagement of the war, Virginia militia under the 22-year-old Lieutenant colonel George Washington defeat a French reconnaissance party in the Battle of Jumonville Glen in what is now Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania.

1830 – U.S. President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act which relocates Native Americans.

1892 – In San Francisco, John Muir organizes the Sierra Club.

1907 – The first Isle of Man TT race was held.

1934 – Near Callander, Ontario, Canada, the Dionne quintuplets are born to Oliva and Elzire Dionne; they will be the first quintuplets to survive infancy.

1936 – Alan Turing submits "On Computable Numbers" for publication.

1937 – The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, D.C., who pushes a button signaling the start of vehicle traffic over the span.

Volkswagen (VW), the German automobile manufacturer is founded.

1951 – The British radio comedy program The Goon Show is broadcast on the BBC for the first time.

1958 – Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement, heavily reinforced by Frank Pais Militia, overwhelm an army post in El Uvero.

1961 – Peter Benenson's article The Forgotten Prisoners is published in several internationally read newspapers. This will later be thought of as the founding of the human rights organization Amnesty International.

1964 – The Palestine Liberation Organization is formed.

1969 - Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull were arrested at their London home and charged with possession of cannabis.

1977 – In Southgate, Kentucky, the Beverly Hills Supper Club is engulfed in fire, killing 165 people inside.

Sting, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers play together for the first time when they perform as part of Mike Howlett's band, Strontium 90.

1985 - Desert Island Discs radio presenter Roy Plomley died. He devised the BBC Radio series Desert Island Discs in 1941, and went on to present 1,791 editions of the show, which became one of the longest running radio shows in the UK.

1987 – West German pilot Mathias Rust, who was 18 years old, evades Soviet Union air defenses and lands a private plane in the Red Square in Moscow, Russia. He is immediately detained and would not be released until August 3, 1988.

1995 – The Russian town of Neftegorsk is hit by a 7.6 magnitude earthquake that kills at least 2,000 people, half of the total population.

1996 – U.S. President Bill Clinton's former business partners in the Whitewater land deal, Jim McDougal and Susan McDougal, and the Governor of Arkansas Jim Guy Tucker, are convicted of fraud.

1999 – In Milan, Italy, after 22 years of restoration work, Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece The Last Supper is put back on display.

2002 – The last steel girder is removed from the original World Trade Center site. Cleanup duties officially end with closing ceremonies at Ground Zero in Manhattan, New York City.

2011 – Malta votes on the introduction of divorce. Welcome to the nineteenth century, Malta.

Births

1818 – P. G. T. Beauregard; 1888 – Jim Thorpe; 1908 – Ian Fleming; 1910 – T-Bone Walker; 1917 – Papa John Creach; 1922 – Lou Duva (boxing manager); 1933 – John Karlen ('Lacey''s husband on "Cagney & Lacey", "Dark Shadows"); 1936 – Betty Shabazz; 1944 – Rudy Giuliani; 1944 – Gladys Knight; 1944 – Sondra Locke; 1944 – Gary Stewart, Billy Vera; 1945 – Patch Adams (no, the real one); 1945 – John Fogerty; 1949 – Wendy O. Williams (Plasmatics); Kamala, The Ugandan Giant (wrestler); Townsend Coleman (voice of "The Tick"); 1961 – Michelle Collins; 1962 - Roland Gift (Fine Young Cannibals); 1964 – Phil Vassar; 1968 – Kylie Minogue; 1969 – Rob Ford; 1971 – Marco Rubio; 1977 – Elisabeth Hasselbeck; 1985 – Colbie Caillat

Deaths

1843 – Noah Webster; 1849 – Anne Brontë; 1971 – Audie Murphy; 1998 – Phil Hartman; 2003 – Martha Scott; 2010 – Gary Coleman; 2014 – Maya Angelou; 2015 – Reynaldo Rey