What happened today
0048
Famous birthdays
1938
Get history's greatest tales
Subscribe to our HistoryNet Now! newsletter for a blast from the past each week in your inbox.
more events on September 28
-
2008
SpaceX launches the first private spacecraft, Falcon 1.
-
1996
Afghanistan’s former president (1986-92) Mohammad Najibullah tortured and murdered by the Taliban.
-
1995
Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat sign an interim agreement concerning settlement on the Gaza Strip.
-
1963
Roy Lichtenstein’s pop art work Whaam!, depicting in comic-book style a US jet shooting down an enemy fighter, is exhibited for the first time; it will become one of the best known examples of pop art.
-
1961
Military coup in Damascus ends the Egypt-Syria union known as the United Arab Republic that was formed Feb. 1, 1958.
-
1960
Jennifer Rush, singer, songwriter (“The Power of Love”).
-
1959
Explorer VI, the U.S. satellite, takes the first video pictures of earth.
-
1958
France ratifies a new constitution.
-
1943
Winston “Win” Percy, three-time British Touring Car Champion, regarded by many as the World’s Number One Touring Car Driver
-
1939
Stuart Kauffman, theoretical biologist renowned for his work in studying the origin of life and origins of molecular organization.
-
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agree on a division of Poland; Warsaw surrenders to German troops.
-
1938
Koko Taylor, blues singer.
-
Ben E. King, lead singer of The Drifters and composer of “Spanish Harlem” and “Stand by Me.”
-
1934
Brigitte Bardot, French actress.
-
1928
Sir Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin when he notices a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory; it remained for Howard Florey and Ernst Chain to isolate the active ingredient, allowing the “miracle drug” to be developed in the 1940s.