History of the Day for:
April 28
- 1758: The fifth president of the United States, James Monroe, was born in Westmoreland County, Va.
- 1788: Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
- 1789: On a return journey from Tahiti, crew members of the Bounty, led by Fletcher Christian, staged a mutiny against Captain William Bligh who was cast adrift.
- 1932: The first yellow fever vaccine was announced.
- 1945: Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, were executed by Italian partisans as they attempted to flee the country.
- 1947: A six-man expedition set out from Peru on a balsa wood raft named the "Kon-Tiki." The journey across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia took 101 days.
- 1967: Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the Army, the same day General William C. Westmoreland told Congress the U.S. "would prevail in Vietnam."
- 1969: President De Gaulle of France resigned after voters rejected government reforms in a referendum.
- 1970: Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon formally authorizes American combat troops to fight communist sanctuaries in Cambodia.
- 1977: The Red Army Faction trial ends, with Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe found guilty of four counts of murder and more than 30 counts of attempted murder.
- 1977: The Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure is signed.
- 1978: President of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, is overthrown and assassinated in a coup led by pro-communist rebels.
- 1986: The United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise becomes the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to transit the Suez Canal, navigating from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea to relieve the USS Coral Sea, on station across the "Line of Death" in the Gulf of Sidra off the coast of Libya. The transit began at 0300 and lasted 12 hours.
- 1987: American engineer Ben Linder is killed in an ambush by U.S.-funded Contras in northern Nicaragua.
- 1988: Near Maui, Hawaii, flight attendant Clarabelle "C.B." Lansing is blown out of Aloha Flight 243, a Boeing 737, and falls to her death when part of the plane's fuselage rips open in mid-flight.
- 1994: Former C.I.A. official Aldrich Ames pleads guilty to giving U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and later Russia.
- 1996: Whitewater controversy: Bill Clinton gives a 4½ hour videotaped testimony for the defense.
- 1996: In Tasmania, Australia, Martin Bryant goes on a shooting spree, killing 35 people and seriously injuring 21 more.
- 1997:: The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention goes into effect, with Russia, Iraq and North Korea among the nations that have not ratified the treaty.
- 2001: Millionaire Dennis Tito becomes the world's first space tourist.
- 2005: The Patent Law Treaty goes into effect.