December 28

1612- Galileo observes and records a “fixed star” without realizing it is planet Neptune

1732 – Benjamin Franklin under the pseudonym Richard Saunders begins publication of “Poor Richard’s Almanack”

1832 – After being elected Senator from South Carolina, John C. Calhoun becomes the 1st Vice President of the United States to resign.

1835 – Osceola leads the Seminoles into the 2nd Seminole War against the United States.

1846 – Iowa is admitted as the 29th U.S. state.

1895 – Wilhelm Röntgen publishes a paper in the journal of the Würzburg Physical Medical Society, about his discovery in November of a new type of radiation. Since it was of a type unknown to him, he refers to it as X radiation, which radiated X-rays.

1902 – The Syracuse Athletic Club defeat the New York Philadelphians, 5–0, in the first indoor professional football game, held at Madison Square Garden.

1912 – San Francisco starts the first municipal owned streetcar service

1967 – American businesswoman Muriel Siebert becomes the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

1948 – The Airborne Transport Airlines DC-3 NC16002 enroute from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Miami, Florida, with 32 passengers and crew aboard disappears after the pilot’s last radio contact, some 50 mi south of Miami within the ‘Bermuda Triangle’

1973 – The Endangered Species Act is signed into law by President Nixon.

1978 – United Airlines Flight 173, a McDonnell Douglas DC, runs out of fuel on final approach to landing and crashes in a residential neighborhood near Portland International Airport, killing 10 of the 189 passengers and crew aboard.

1987 – After earlier shooting, strangling and drowning 14 relatives at his home near Dover, Arkansas, Ronald Gene Simmons, shoots and kills 2 and wounds 4 more people at former places of employment before surrendering to police. Later he is sentenced to death and executed in 1990.

1999 – Clayton “The Lone Ranger” Moore, dies, age 85 at West Hills Hospital, California.

2021 – Former Senator Harry Reid, dies, age 82, at his home in Henderson, Nevada.