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On this day in history - March 28

What Happened On This Day – March 28

  • 1990 Jesse Owens posthumously receives the Congressional Gold Medal

    The African American athlete dominated the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, which were held during the reign of Adolf Hitler's racist nazi regime.

  • 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear power plant experiences a partial meltdown and radioactive leak

    The coolant leak was the worst commercial nuclear accident in the United States. A continuous string of nuclear disasters, such as Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986), and Fukushima (2011) continue to raise doubts about the security and environmental benefit of nuclear power.

  • 1969 Greek poet Giorgos Seferis speaks out against the military junta

    The Nobel Prize laureate issued his now famous statement against Greece's repressive right-wing Regime of the Colonels on the BBC World Service.

  • 1963 Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds is released

    The film about a swarm of birds wreaking havoc in Bodega Bay, California has become a classic of the horror movie genre.

  • 1910 The first seaplane in history takes off

    French inventor Henri Fabre's Canard (Fabre Hydravion) was the first floatplane to take off from water under its own power. The first flight measured 457 meters.

Illustration of stork, signifying birth

Births On This Day,
March 28

  • 1986 Lady Gaga

    American singer-songwriter, producer, actress

  • 1955 Reba McEntire

    American singer-songwriter, producer, actress

  • 1946 Alejandro Toledo

    Peruvian politician, 48th President of Peru

  • 1936 Mario Vargas Llosa

    Peruvian/Spanish journalist, author, Nobel Prize laureate

  • 1483 Raphael

    Italian painter, architect

Illustration of tombstone, signifying death

Deaths On This Day,
March 28

  • 2004 Peter Ustinov

    English actor, director, producer, screenwriter

  • 1969 Dwight D. Eisenhower

    American general, politician, 34th President of the United States

  • 1943 Sergei Rachmaninoff

    Russian pianist, composer, conductor

  • 1941 Virginia Woolf

    English author, critic

  • 1584 Ivan the Terrible

    Russian Tsar