Year retrospective · 1920s

1928

1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1928th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 928th year of the 2nd millennium, the 28th year of the 20th century, and the 9th year of the 1920s decade.

Recorded events

10

top entries

Notable births

4

Notable deaths

24

Decade

1920s

Timeline

Defining events of 1928

  1. 1928 The Bremen, a German Junkers W 33 type aircraft, takes off for the first successful transatlantic aeroplane flight from east to west.

    Historic German Junkers W 33 aircraft

    The Bremen is a German Junkers W 33 aircraft that made the first successful transatlantic aeroplane flight from east to west on April 12 and 13, 1928.

  2. 1928 The Kellogg–Briand Pact outlawing war is signed by fifteen nations. Ultimately sixty-one nations will sign it.

    1928 international agreement

    The Kellogg–Briand Pact or Pact of Paris is a 1928 international agreement on peace in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve "disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them". The pact was signed by Germany, France, and the United States on 27 August 1928, and by most other states soon after. Sponsored by France and the US, the Pact is named after its authors, United States Secretary of State Frank B.

  3. 1928 Indian revolutionaries Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru assassinate British police officer James Saunders in Lahore, Punjab, to avenge the death of Lala Lajpat Rai at the hands of the police. The three were executed in 1931.

    Indian revolutionary (1907–1931)

    Bhagat Singh was an Indian anti-colonial revolutionary who participated in the mistaken murder of a junior British police officer in December 1928 in what was intended to be retaliation for the death of an Indian nationalist. He later took part in a largely symbolic bombing of the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi and a hunger strike in jail, which—on the back of sympathetic coverage in Indian-owned newspapers—turned him into a household name in the Punjab region, and, after his execution at age 23, a martyr and folk hero in Northern India. Borrowing ideas from Bolshevism and anarchism, the charismatic Bhagat Singh electrified a growing militancy in India in the 1930s and prompted urgent introspection within the Indian National Congress's nonviolent, and eventually successful, campaign for India's independence.

  4. 1928 Cosmo Gordon Lang was enthroned as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the first bachelor to be appointed in 150 years.

    British archbishop (1864–1945)

    William Cosmo Gordon Lang, 1st Baron Lang of Lambeth, was a Scottish Anglican clergyman who served as Archbishop of York (1908–1928) and Archbishop of Canterbury (1928–1942). His elevation to Archbishop of York, within 18 years of his ordination, was the most rapid in modern Church of England history. As Archbishop of Canterbury during the abdication crisis of 1936, he took a strong moral stance, his comments in a subsequent broadcast being widely condemned as uncharitable towards the departed king.

  5. 1928 The government of Colombia sends military forces to suppress a month-long strike by United Fruit Company workers, resulting in an unknown number of deaths.

    1928 mass killing of striking United Fruit Company workers in Ciénaga, Colombia

    The Banana Massacre was a massacre of workers of the United Fruit Company that occurred between December 5 and 6, 1928, in the town of Ciénaga near Santa Marta, Colombia. A strike began on November 12, 1928, when the workers ceased to work until the company would reach an agreement with them to grant them dignified working conditions. After several weeks with no agreement, in which the United Fruit Company refused to negotiate with the workers, the government of Miguel Abadía Méndez assigned Carlos Cortés Vargas as military chief in the Magdalena department and sent 700 men from the Colombian Army to quell the strikers, resulting in the massacre of 47–2000 people.

  6. 1928 Boris Bazhanov defects through Iran to seek asylum in France. He is the only member of Joseph Stalin's secretariat to have defected from the Soviet Union.

    Soviet politician and defector (1900–1982)

    Boris Georgiyevich Bazhanov was a secretary of the Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union who published memoirs about Stalin and his secrets.

  7. 1928 Bundaberg tragedy: a diphtheria vaccine is contaminated with Staph. aureus bacterium, resulting in the deaths of twelve children in the Australian town of Bundaberg.
  8. 1928 Leon Trotsky is exiled to Alma-Ata.
  9. 1928 A disastrous flood of the River Thames kills 14 people and causes extensive damage to much of riverside London.
  10. 1928 Sliced bread is sold for the first time (on the inventor's 48th birthday) by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri.

Arrivals

Born in 1928

James Ivory 1928– American film director and screenwriter (born 1928)
James Ivory 1928– American film director and screenwriter (born 1928)
James Ivory 1928– American film director and screenwriter (born 1928)
James Ivory 1928– American film director and screenwriter (born 1928)

Farewells

Died in 1928

Ezra Meeker American pioneer (1830–1928)
José Sánchez del Río Mexican Cristero and Saint (1913–1928)
William O'Brien Irish nationalist journalist and politician
Adolphe Appia Swiss architect and theorist of stage lighting and décor
Ina Coolbrith American, first poet laureate of California, writer, and librarian (1841–1928)
Robert Abbe American surgeon and radiologist
Ezra Meeker American pioneer (1830–1928)
José Sánchez del Río Mexican Cristero and Saint (1913–1928)
William O'Brien Irish nationalist journalist and politician
Adolphe Appia Swiss architect and theorist of stage lighting and décor
Ina Coolbrith American, first poet laureate of California, writer, and librarian (1841–1928)
Robert Abbe American surgeon and radiologist

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