December 28 in History

• 1694

  December 28, 1694:

  Queen Mary II of England dies aged 32 from smallpox.

• 1832

  December 28, 1832:

  John C. Calhoun, Vice President of the United States, makes history when he becomes the first vice president to resign from office.

• 1895

  December 28, 1895:

  The Lumière brothers hold a public demonstration of their motion picture apparatus, the Cinématographe in Paris’ Grand Café.

• 1938

  December 28, 1938:

  Actress Florence Lawrence poisons herself and dies.

• 1944

  December 28, 1944:

  The musical, “On the Town” premieres on Broadway.

• 1973

  December 28, 1973:

  The Endangered Species Act is signed by US President Richard Nixon making it mandatory for state and federal governments to protect species on the verge of extinction.

• December 28, 1973:

  “The Gulag Archipelago”, a non-fiction book by Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, is published.

• 1991

  December 28, 1991:

  Nine people die after a stampede occurred outside the venue of a celebrity basketball game.

• 2008

  December 28, 2008:

  The NFL’s Detroit Lions become the league’s first team to lose all of its regular-season games (16 in total).