April 28

1220 Bishop Poore laid the first five stones for Salisbury Cathedral, the prime example of Gothic Cathedrals in Britain on April 28, 1220. There was one each for himself, Archbishop Stephen Langton, Pope Honorius III, Earl William and Countess Ela of Salisbury. Salisbury Cathedral was completed in 1258. Its dial-less clock is probably the oldest existing mechanical contraption still working actively in Britain.

Salisbury Cathedral from the East. By Antony McCallum: Wikipedia

1253 Nichiren was a Japanese monk who lived during the 13th century and is known for founding the Nichiren school of Buddhism. On April 28, 1253, Nichiren is said to have expounded the chant "Namu Myoho Renge Kyo" for the first time, which he believed to be the essence of the Lotus Sutra and the key to attaining enlightenment.

1503 Five weeks after the death of Elizabeth I, her funeral took place in Westminster Abbey on April 28, 1503. Elizabeth I's coffin was carried from Whitehall to Westminster Abbey where she was buried immediately next to her half sister Mary I. The Latin inscription on their tomb translates to "Partners both in Throne and grave, here rest we two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, in the hope of one resurrection".

Elizabeth as shown on her grave at Westminster Abbey.

1503 The Battle of Cerignola was fought on April 28, 1503, between Spanish and French armies near Bari in Southern Italy. It is noted as the first battle in history won by gunpowder weapons, as the assault by Swiss pikemen and French cavalry was shattered by the fire of Spanish arquebusters behind a ditch.

1611 The University of Santo Tomas (UST) is a private Roman Catholic research university located in Manila, Philippines. It was founded on April 28, 1611, by Miguel de Benavides, who was the third Archbishop of Manila at the time. UST has the distinction of being the oldest university in the Philippines and in Asia.

The Benavides Monument facing the University of Santo Tomas building

1758 James Monroe, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 5th President of the United States, was born on April 28, 1758, in his parents' house located in a wooded area of Westmoreland County, Virginia. His father Spence Monroe was a moderately prosperous planter who also practiced carpentry. At age 18, Monroe joined the Continental Army where his background as a college student and the son of a well-known planter enabled him to obtain an officer's commission.

1772 Johann Friedrich Struensee, the royal physician to the mentally ill King Christian VII of Denmark 

seized power in his country in December 1770. He managed to abolish slavery, abolish censorship of the press, and have an affair with the Queen before being ousted and executed on April 28, 1772.

Public execution of Struensee on 28 April 1772

1772 The world's most traveled goat died on April 28, 1772. She sailed round the globe several times providing milk for the crews and even the Admiralty acknowledged her travels. Her first important journey was with Captain Wallis on the Dolphin, when it became the first ship to go twice around the world. Then she was loaded onto the Endeavour, commanded by Captain Cook.

1789 On April 28, 1789, near the Friendly Islands, Fletcher Christian led a mutiny on the Bounty. He cast adrift Captain Bligh and 18 sailors in a small boat, while Christian and the Bounty went back to Tahiti. Bligh and the sailors were cast adrift with enough food and water for about a week. They were also given four cutlasses, a compass, and a quadrant, but no maps.

Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 others adrift; 1790 painting by Robert Dodd

1801 Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury KG was born on April 28, 1801 at 24 Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, London. He was styled Lord Ashley from 1811 to 1851 and then Lord Shaftesbury following the death of his father. As an MP, Shaftesbury was fired by Christian zeal. He was instrumental in introducing Acts to alleviate the hard lot of factory workers, many of them children, who had been forced to work long hours in severe working conditions since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

1814 The 1000 Guineas was first run at Newmarket on April 28, 1814, five years after the inaugural running of the equivalent race for both colts and fillies, the 2000 Guineas. The horse race is open to three-year-old fillies only. The first winner of the race was a filly named Charlotte, owned by the 4th Duke of Grafton.

1828 The first horse-drawn omnibus service was started by a businessman named Stanislas Baudry in the French city of Nantes in 1823 using two spring-suspended carriages, each for 16 passengers. It was a success and Baudry moved to Paris and launched the first omnibus service there on April 28, 1828. The service ran every 15 minutes between La Madeleine and La Bastille. Soon, there were 100 omnibuses in service in Paris, with 18 different itineraries. A journey cost 25 centimes.

Illustration of the car "Entreprise Générale des Omnibus" on an old map of Paris 

1881 Billy the Kid also known as William H. Bonney, was a notorious American outlaw who was active in the late 1800s in the American Southwest. He was sentenced to death for murdering a sheriff in Lincoln County, New Mexico and was being held in the county jail awaiting his execution. On April 28, 1881. Billy the Kid made a daring escape from the jailhouse, killing two deputies on guard in the process. He avoided capture for 77 days when he was ambushed and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett.

1886 The French artist Paul Cézanne spent 17 years with his mistress and muse, Hortense Fiquet, whom he painted 27 times, before marrying her on April 28, 1886. Fiquet was to live separately from her husband for much of their married life. After the death of Cézanne's father the pair separated, the artist moving in with his sister and mother and declaring, "My wife only cares for Switzerland and lemonade."

Hortense Cézanne in a Red Dress, c.1890

1887 Georges Bouton was the nominal winner of the 'world's first motor race' on April 28, 1887, when he drove his first four-seater steam quadricycle, two kilometers from Neuilly Bridge to the Bois de Boulogne. Bouton was the only entrant in the race, making him the nominal winner. Despite the lack of competition, the event was still seen as a significant milestone in the development of the automobile, and it helped to popularize the idea of motor racing as a sport.

1916 Ferruccio Lamborghini, founder of Automobili Lamborghini, was born on April 28, 1916.
Ferrucio Lamborghini began by making tractors out of parts from American and British military circles after the Second World War before turning to sports cars. He founded Lamborghini because he wanted to build a good touring car to compete against the cars of such makers as Ferrari.

1924 Kenneth Kaunda, who ruled Zambia for 30 years with his party UNIP, was born April 28. 1924. From 1973 UNIP was the only legal party and all other parties were banned. After protests, democratic elections were held in 1991. Kenneth Kaunda lost the elections and gave away his power to his successor Frederick Chiluba, a former trade union leader.

1926 The author Harper Lee was born Nelle Harper Lee in Monroeville, Alabama on April 28, 1926. Lee was named in honor of a grandmother called Ellen; (Nelle is Ellen spelled backwards). Until the day she died, the people in her life referred to Lee as Nelle. Her father an editor, lawyer and politician (he served in the Alabama House of Representatives) is purported to be the model upon some of the characteristics for Atticus Finch (from To Kill a Mockingbird) was based.

1928 A crowd of 5,000 watched the first ever organized speedway meeting in Britain at Celtic Park, Glasgow on April 28 1928. The event featured riders from Scotland and England competing in a series of races. Celtic Park was used as a speedway venue for a total of 12 meetings between April and July 1928, with riders competing on a specially constructed track around the perimeter of the football pitch. 

1937 The Pan American Airways' Boeing 314 Clipper seaplane made the first commercial airline flight across the Pacific on April 28, 1937. The flight departed from San Francisco and made stops in Honolulu, Midway Island, Wake Island, Guam, and Manila before arriving in Hong Kong. The journey took approximately 59 hours and covered a distance of 8,210 miles. 

1937 Saddam Hussein was born on April 28, 1937 in the village of Al-Awja, in the Tikrit in Iraq. He never knew his father, Hussein 'Abd al-Majid, who disappeared five months before Saddam was born. In 1957, at the age of 20, Saddam became part of the Ba'ath Party. The Ba'ath party is an Arab group that espoused ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism. By 1967, he had become one of the leading members of the party.

1945 On April 27, 1945 Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were sentenced to be shot in the back, an Italian method of execution. The next day they were both executed along with their sixteen-man train, mostly ministers and officials of the Italian Social Republic. Mussolini died like a coward shouting, “no, no” to his firing squad before the volley rang out. Clara Petacci clung to him till the last.

1967 Having been reclassified by the Army from his original 1-Y deferred category to 1-A, Muhammad Ali claimed conscientious-objector status on the basis of his membership in the Black Muslims. Appearing for his scheduled induction into the Armed Forces on April 28, 1967 in Houston, Ali refused to step forward at the call of his name. Consequently he was stripped of his World Heavyweight Champion titles and convicted of draft evasion. He was freed on appeal.

2001 Dennis Tito, an American businessman and former rocket engineer, became the world's first fee-paying space tourist on April 28, 2001. He paid the Russian space agency $20 million for a seat on the Soyuz TM-32 spacecraft, which launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and docked with the International Space Station (ISS) two days later.  Tito spent seven days aboard the ISS, conducting experiments and taking photographs of the Earth from space.

2004 Chaser born on April 28, 2004, was a Border Collie with the largest tested memory of any non-human animal. She could identify and retrieve 1,022 toys by name, the record for the most objects a non-human animal could identify by name. Studies also showed Chaser's ability to learn new object names by being presented with familiar toys alongside a novel one. 

2011 The 2011 Super Outbreak was the worst recorded tornado outbreak in U.S. history. Between April 25–28, 2011, a record 208 tornadoes touched down in the Southern, Midwestern, and Northeastern United States killing 346 people and leaving catastrophic destruction in its wake.

2014 The title of world's largest returning boomerang belongs to a behemoth crafted by the British Boomerang Society and The One Show in the UK. This giant boomerang measures an impressive 2.74 meters (9 feet) from tip to tip. It successfully achieved its return flight during a record-setting attempt at the Kia Oval Cricket Ground in London on April 28, 2014.