September 28
Today is a busy day:
Today is
Freedom From Hunger Day.
Today is
International Right to Know Day, "raising awareness about people's right to access government information while promoting freedom of information as essential to both democracy and good governance".
Today is
See You at the Pole Day, "an annual gathering of thousands of Christian students at a flagpole in front of their local school for prayer, scripture-reading and worship, during the early morning before school starts."
Today is
World Rabies Day.
And, finally, today is
Ask a Stupid Question Day, in the United States. In honor of same: Who is buried in Grant's tomb?
48 BC After landing in Egypt,
Pompey the Great is assassinated on the orders of
Ptolemy, King of Egypt.
1066
William the Conqueror invades England beginning the
Norman conquest of England.
1781 American forces backed by a French fleet begin
the siege of Yorktown, Virginia, during the American Revolutionary War.
1787 The newly completed
United States Constitution is voted on by the U.S. Congress to be sent to the state legislatures for approval.
1791 France becomes the first country to
emancipate its Jewish population.
1871 The Brazilian Parliament passes the
Law of the Free Womb, granting freedom to all new children born to slaves, the first major step in the eradication of
slavery in Brazil.
1889 The first
General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) defines the length of a meter as the distance between two lines on a standard bar of an alloy of platinum with ten percent iridium, measured at the melting point of ice.
1892 The first
night game for American football takes place in a contest between
Wyoming Seminary and
Mansfield State Normal.
1912 The
Ulster Covenant is signed by some 500,000 Ulster Protestant Unionists in opposition to the
Third Irish Home Rule Bill.
1924
First round-the-world flight is completed.
1928 Sir
Alexander Fleming notices a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory, discovering what later became known as
penicillin.
1951 CBS makes the first
color televisions available for sale to the general public, but the product is discontinued less than a month later.
1973 The
ITT Building in New York City is bombed in protest at ITT's alleged involvement in the
September 11, 1973 coup d'ιtat in Chile.
1975 The
Spaghetti House siege, in which nine people are taken hostage, takes place in London.
1991, American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer
Miles Davis died of a stroke and pneumonia. His 1959 album '
Kind of Blue', is a major influence on jazz music. Davis is considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century.
1994 The cruise ferry
MS Estonia sinks in the Baltic Sea, killing 852 people.
2008
SpaceX launches the first private spacecraft,
Falcon 1 into orbit.
Births
551 BC Confucius ("He who stand on toilet, is high on pot."); 1836 Thomas Crapper (invented the ballcock,
snicker); 1901 William S. Paley (founded CBS); 1901 Ed Sullivan (had a really big shoe); 1905 Max Schmeling

; 1909 Al Capp (created
Li'l Abner); 1914 Maria Franziska von Trapp (of the
The Sound Of Music von Trapps); 1916 Peter Finch (
he's as mad as hell, and he's not going to take this anymore); 1925 Seymour Cray (founded the CRAY Computer Company); 1926 Jerry Clower; 1934 Brigitte Bardot; 1935 Ronald Lacey (got his face melted off in
Raiders Of The Lost Ark); 1938 Ben E. King♪ ♫; 1943 J. T. Walsh; 1950 John Sayles; 1954 George Lynch

(Dokken, Lynch Mob); 1964 Janeane Garofalo; 1967 Mira Sorvino; 1967 Moon Zappa; 1968 Francois Botha

; 1968 Rob Moroso

; 1968 Naomi Watts; 1972 Dita Von Teese; 1979 Bam Margera (jackass, I mean
Jackass); 1987 Hilary Duff♪ ♫
Deaths
48 BC Pompey; 1891 Herman Melville (
Typee, Omoo, Moby Dick); 1895 Louis Pasteur; 1914 Richard Warren Sears (yeah,
that Sears); 1935 William Kennedy Dickson (invented the Kinetoscope); 1953 Edwin Hubble; 1956 William Boeing (yeah,
that Boeing); 1964 Harpo Marx; 1970 John Dos Passos; 1970 Gamal Abdel Nasser; 1989 Ferdinand Marcos; 1991 Miles Davis♪ ♫; 2000 Pierre Trudeau

; 2003 Althea Gibson; 2003 Elia Kazan; 2007 Wally Parks (founded Nat'l Hot Rod Assn (NHRA); 2012 Chris Economaki; 2016 Shimon Peres