Also on this day
Lead Story
1953
On this day in 1953, workers at a Chevrolet plant in Flint, Michigan, assemble the first Corvette, a two-seater sports car that would become an American icon. The first completed production car rolled off the assembly line two days later, one of just 300 Corvettes made that year.
The idea for...
American Revolution
1836
On this day in 1836, James Madison, drafter of the Constitution, recorder of the Constitutional Convention, author of the “Federalist Papers” and fourth president of the United States, dies on his tobacco plantation in Virginia.
Madison first distinguished himself as a student at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University),...
Automotive
2006
After a flurry of rumors, DaimlerChrysler chairman Dieter Zetsche announces on this day in 2006 that the company’s urban-focused Smart brand–already popular in Europe–will come to the United States in early 2008.
Smart–an acronym for Swatch Mercedes ART–began as a joint venture between Swatch, the company known for its colorful...
Civil War
1862
On this day in 1862, a Confederate band makes a daring capture of a commercial vessel on Chesapeake Bay. The plan was the brainchild of George Hollins, a Maryland native and veteran of the War of 1812, who joined the U.S. Navy at age 15 and had a long and...
Cold War
1948
The Soviet Union expels Yugoslavia from the Communist Information Bureau (COMINFORM) for the latter’s position on the Greek civil war. The expulsion was concrete evidence of the permanent split that had taken place between Russia and Yugoslavia. The Soviet Union had established COMINFORM in 1947 to serve as a coordinating...
Crime
1975
Police are called to the home of Jim and Naomi Olive in Terra Linda, California, after Jim Olive’s business partner reports that the couple has not been seen in a week. The house in disarray, officers found no sign of either the Olives or their adopted teenage daughter Marlene. However,...
1993
A knife-wielding serial rapist and murderer attacks Denise Sam-Cali in her Allentown, Pennsylvania, home. Although he succeeded in raping Sam-Cali on the front lawn outside her house, the courageous woman survived and later proved instrumental in bringing him to justice.
Sam-Cali’s vicious attack was the third of its kind that month...
Disaster
1992
Two of the strongest earthquakes ever to hit California strike the desert area east of Los Angeles on this day in 1992. Although the state sits upon the immense San Andreas fault line, relatively few major earthquakes have hit California in modern times. Two of the strongest, but...
General Interest
1519
Charles I of Spain, who by birth already held sway over much of Europe and Spanish America, is elected the successor of his late grandfather, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. Charles, who was also the grandson of Ferdinand II and Isabella of Spain, had bribed the princes of Germany to...
1914
On this day in 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are shot to death by a Bosnian Serb nationalist during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. The killings sparked a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I by...
1919
At the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, Germany signs the Treaty of Versailles with the Allies, officially ending World War I. The English economist John Maynard Keynes, who had attended the peace conference but then left in protest of the treaty, was one of the most outspoken critics of the...
1969
Just after 3 a.m., a police raid of the Stonewall Inn—a gay club located on New York City’s Christopher Street—turns violent as patrons and local sympathizers begin rioting against the police.
Although the police were legally justified in raiding the club, which was serving liquor without a license among other violations,...
Hollywood
1916
On this day in 1916, Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players Film Company merges with the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, forming the Famous Players-Lasky Company. The company will later become Paramount Pictures, one of the first and most successful Hollywood motion-picture studios.
Zukor, a Hungarian immigrant who became a successful Chicago...
Literary
1888
Writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his family leave San Francisco for their first visit to the South Seas on this day in 1888. Stevenson, an adventurous traveler plagued by tuberculosis, was seeking a healthier climate. The family finally settled in Samoa, where Stevenson died in 1894.
Stevenson was born in...
Music
1928
On June 28, 1928, a 26-year-old Louis Armstrong walked into a Chicago recording studio with five fellow jazz instrumentalists and walked out having changed the course of music history. The record Armstrong and his Hot Five had just made was of a song called “West End Blues,” written and first...
Old West
1857
Emerson Hough, one of the most successful writers of adventure novels of the romantic western genre, is born in Newton, Iowa.
After graduating from the State University of Iowa in 1880, Hough briefly studied law before turning to a career in journalism. In his 20s, he became the manager of...
Presidential
1919
On this day in 1919, future President Harry S. Truman marries his longtime Missourian sweetheart, Bess. When the two met, Truman told a friend that she had the “most beautiful golden curls and blue eyes” and that she was the “one girl in the world” for him.
Although they had known...
Sports
1997
On June 28, 1997, Mike Tyson bites Evander Holyfield’s ear in the third round of their heavyweight rematch. The attack led to his disqualification from the match and suspension from boxing, and was the strangest chapter yet in the champion’s roller-coaster career.
Mike Tyson enjoyed a rapid rise to stardom. In...
Vietnam War
1965
In the first major offensive ordered for U.S. forces, 3,000 troops of the 173rd Airborne Brigade–in conjunction with 800 Australian soldiers and a Vietnamese airborne unit–assault a jungle area known as Viet Cong Zone D, 20 miles northeast of Saigon. The operation was called off after three days when it...
World War I
1914
In an event that is widely acknowledged to have sparked the outbreak of World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, nephew of Emperor Franz Josef and heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is shot to death along with his wife by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on this day in 1914.
The...
World War II
1940
On this day in 1940, General Charles de Gaulle, having set up headquarters in England upon the establishment of a puppet government in his native France, is recognized as the leader of the Free French Forces, dedicated to the defeat of Germany and the liberation of all France.
For Charles de...
