News24, South Africa
May 28 2004
On this day
Today is Friday, May 28, the 148th day of 2004. There are 217 days
left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1919 – Armenia declares its independence, breaking up the short-lived
Transcaucasian Federal Republic. Armenia joins the Soviet Union
in 1922.
1568 – Duke of Alva confiscates properties of William of Orange and
other nobles opposing Spanish rule in the Netherlands.
1674 – Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I declares war on France.
1812 – Russia, by Treaty of Bucharest with Turkey, obtains Bessarabia
and withdraws demand for Moldavia and Wallachia. The peace frees the
czar to act against Napoleon.
1828 – St Andrew’s Church, Cape Town, is founded.
1863 – The first black regiment from the North leaves Boston to fight
in the American Civil War.
1864 – Austria-Hungary’s Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian lands in
Veracruz, Mexico, to become Emperor.
1919 – Armenia declares its independence, breaking up the short-lived
Transcaucasian Federal Republic. Armenia joins the Soviet Union in
1922.
1923- The US Attorney General determines it is legal for women to
wear trousers and when they please.
1934 – The Dionne quintuplets, world’s first known surviving
quintuplets, are born near Callander, Ontario.
1937 – US President Franklin Roosevelt pushes a button in Washington
signalling that vehicular traffic could cross the just-opened Golden
Gate Bridge in California.
1940 – Two weeks after being invaded, Belgium capitulates to Germany
while British and French troops begin evacuation from Dunkerque,
France.
1948 – Reacting to the defeat of General Jan Smuts in the general
election two days previously, British leader Sir Winston Churchill
says: “A great world statesman has fallen and with him his country
will undergo a period of anxiety and perhaps temporary eclipse.”
1961 – Paris-Bucharest Orient Express train makes final trip after 78
years; human rights organisation Amnesty International is founded.
1971 – Soviet Union launches spacecraft toward planet Mars,
containing the first capsules to land on the planet.
1976 – United States and Soviet Union sign treaty limiting size of
underground nuclear explosions set off for peaceful purposes.
1977 – Fire races through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate,
Kentucky, killing 165 people.
1979 – Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat announces opening of air
corridors between Egypt and Israel.
1984 – US President Ronald Reagan leads a state funeral at Arlington
National Cemetery for an unidentified American soldier killed in the
Vietnam War.
1985 – David Jacobsen, director of the American University Hospital
in Beirut, Lebanon, is abducted by pro-Iranian kidnappers. He is
freed 17 months later.
1987 – Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old West German pilot, lands a private
plane in Moscow’s Red Square after evading Soviet air defences.
1987 – The ANC takes responsibility for car bombs that exploded the
previous week at the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court. The explosions
claimed the lives of four policemen. Four policemen and nine
civilians were injured.
1988 – Yugoslav government introduces new austerity program that
includes devaluation of dinar and massive price increases.
1989 – Muslim rebels renew offensive against Afghan city of
Jalalabad.
1990 – Lech Walesa persuades rail workers to suspend a strike that
had crippled train service in northern Poland.
1990 – About 5 000 teachers march on Parliament to demand that their
grievances be addressed and call for a single education system for
all.
1991 – Oil tanker explodes, killing one crewman and spilling
undetermined amount of oil into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of
Angola.
1992 – To raise pressure on Haiti, the US announces it will close the
refugee camp at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and bar ships
that trade with Haiti from US ports.
1993 – Bosnian Serbs subject Sarajevo to heavy shelling and sniper
fire despite a new accord on demilitarising the city.
1994 – UN troops step up evacuations of trapped civilians in Kigali,
capital of Rwanda, and appeal for protection for convoys moving
people across battle lines.
1995 – At least 1 500 people die in an earthquake that destroys a
coastal village on Sakhalin Island in Russia’s Far East.
1996 – Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s two-week-old Hindu
nationalist government collapses in India. HD Deve Gowda, leader of
the United Front, is chosen prime minister.
1997 – Ethnic Uzbek troops turn on their Taliban allies and take the
city of Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan after fierce fighting,
marking a major setback for the Islamist Taliban movement.
1998 – Pakistan says it matched India’s recent nuclear test with
detonation of five devices, then declares a state of emergency citing
unspecified threats of “external aggression.”
1999 – An Indian helicopter gunship is blasted from the skies by
Islamic militants in Kashmir when Indian forces try to dislodge them
with airstrikes.
2000 – Sierra Leonean rebels free what appear to be the last of some
500 UN hostages held for nearly a month.
2001 – The first-ever Childrens’ Conference of African nations is
held in Cairo.
2002 – The Libyan government offers to pay $2.7 billion to the
families of 270 victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over
Lockerbie, Scotland, in exchange for an end to US and United Nations
sanctions against Libya.
2003 – New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing
Editor Gerald Boyd resign five weeks after a junior reporter, Jayson
Blair, quits amid allegations of plagiarism and fabricated reporting.
Today’s Birthdays:
William Pitt, English statesman (1759-1806); Edouard Benes,
Czechoslovak statesman (1884-1948); Ian Fleming, British writer
(1908-1964); Patrick White, Australian author (1912-1990); Carroll
Baker, US actress (1931–); Gladys Knight, US singer (1944–); Jeff
Fenech, Australian boxer (1964–); Kylie Minogue, Australian singer
(1968–).
Thought For Today:
All the troubles of man come from his not knowing how to sit still
-Blaise Pascal, French philosopher (1623-1662).- Sapa-AP