#TodayInHistory – October 28

October 28 – Some important events on this day.

1492 👉🏼 Christopher Columbus sights Cuba and claims it for Spain under the name “Juana”
1538 👉🏼 The first university in the New World, the Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino, is established on Hispaniola
1746 👉🏼 Peruvian cities of Lima and Callao demolished by earthquake, 18,000 die
1831 👉🏼 Michael Faraday demonstrates his dynamo invention, an electrical generator
1886 👉🏼 Statue of Liberty dedicated by US President Grover Cleveland, celebrated by first confetti (ticker tape) parade in New York City
1904 👉🏼 St Louis police try a new investigation method – fingerprints
1918 👉🏼 Czechoslovakia gains independence as Austria-Hungary breaks up
1919 👉🏼 Volstead Act passed by US Congress, establishing prohibition, despite President Woodrow Wilson’s veto
1924 👉🏼 Miner M.de Bruin discovers the infant fossil skull, “Taung child” in a lime quarry in Taung, South Africa. Paleoanthropologist Raymond Dart identifies the fossil as a new hominin species, Australopithecus africanus.
2015 👉🏼 Research indicating Plague dates back to the Bronze age in skeletons 5,783 years old, published by University of Copenhagen team in “Cell”
2019 👉🏼 Landslide after heavy rains in Bafoussam, Cameroon, buries at least 42 people