October 28

306 – Maxentius is proclaimed Roman co-emperor, with Constantine, Severus, and Maximian in the West, and Galerius in the East.

312 – Constantine defeats Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge over the river Tiber to become the sole emperor of the Western Roman empire.

969 – The Byzantine Empire retakes the city of Antioch from Hamdanid Arabs

1344 – The army of the first Smyrniote crusade retakes the lower town of Smyrna from Aydınid Turks.

1492 – Christopher Columbus lands in Cuba on his first voyage to the New World.

1520 – Ferdinand Magellan and his fleet finishes transiting the straight, later named after him, and reaches the Pacific Ocean.

1636 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony votes to establish a theological college, later called Harvard University.

1726 – Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels is published.

1776 – Following General Washington’s retreat from New York, British troops attack and capture Chatterton Hill at White Plains, New York from the Continental Army.

1793 – Eliphalet Remington is born in Suffield, Connecticut.

1886 – President Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty.

1919 – Under authority of the 18th amendment, Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Wilson’s veto with Prohibition to begin the following January.

1922 – Italian fascists led by Benito Mussolini march on Rome and take over the Italian government.

1929 – The New York Stock Exchange drops another 38.33 points (12.82%) continuing the economic crisis that started on the 24th.

1942 – The Alaska Highway reaches and connects Alaska to the North American railway network at Dawson Creek in Canada.

1948 – Paul Hermann Müller is awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the insecticidal properties of DDT.

1962 – Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev orders the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba, ending the Cuban Missile Crisis.

2007 – Cristina Fernández de Kirchner becomes the first directly elected female President of Argentina.

2009 – NASA successfully launches the Ares I-X test flight mission for its manned Constellation program.

2014 – A rocket carrying NASA’s Cygnus CRS Orb-3 resupply mission to the International Space Station explodes seconds after taking off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Wallops Island, Virginia.

2018 – Jair Messias Bolsonaro is elected President of Brazil

2022 – Musician Jerry Lee Lewis dies at his home in Nesbit, Mississippi, age 87.