12 History Lessons + 7 Births & 7 Deaths for December 28, 2025
Today’s History
- 1065 – Westminster Abbey is consecrated in London, becoming the coronation church of English and later British monarchs.
- 1612 – Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei observes Neptune (though it is not identified as a planet), an early telescopic glimpse of the distant world.
- 1836 – Spain formally recognizes the independence of Mexico, ending years of post-colonial diplomatic resistance.
- 1846 – Iowa is admitted as the 29th state of the United States, continuing westward expansion in the antebellum era.
- 1895 – The Lumière brothers give one of the first public commercial film screenings in Paris, helping launch cinema as mass entertainment.
- 1918 – President Woodrow Wilson departs the U.S. for Europe to attend the Paris Peace Conference, the first sitting president to travel abroad.
- 1945 – Congress officially recognizes the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag, formalizing a long-used civic ritual.
- 1963 – The Beatles’ single “I Want to Hold Your Hand” enters the U.S. charts, signaling the start of Beatlemania in America.
- 1973 – The Endangered Species Act is signed into law, becoming a cornerstone of U.S. environmental protection policy.
- 1991 – The U.S. Senate votes to dissolve the Soviet Union’s diplomatic recognition, reflecting the definitive end of the Cold War order.
- 2014 – China launches the Long March 5 rocket development program, accelerating ambitions in heavy-lift space capability.
- 2018 – NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft completes the most distant solar system flyby to date, targeting the Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule (Arrokoth).
Today’s Birthdays:
- 1934 – Maggie Smith – English actor with an iconic career across stage, film, and television. (91)
- 1954 – Denzel Washington – American actor and director, two-time Academy Award winner and defining leading man of modern cinema. (71)
- 1969 – Linus Torvalds – Finnish-American software engineer, creator of the Linux operating system kernel. (56)
- 1973 – Seth Meyers – American actor, comedian, writer and producer of Late Night with Seth Meyers and Saturday Night Live. (52)
- 1974 – Joe Manganiello – American actor known for film, television, and genre work. (51)
- 1981 – Sienna Miller – English-American actor and fashion figure with a long film career. (44)
- 1996 – Hailee Steinfeld – American actor and singer whose career spans film, television, and pop music. (29)
Today’s Deaths:
- 1849 – Margaret Fuller – American journalist, critic, and early feminist intellectual. (39)
- 1897 – William Gladstone – British statesman and four-time prime minister, a dominant figure of Victorian politics. (87)
- 1937 – Maurice Ravel – French composer whose works remain central to the orchestral and piano repertoire. (62)
- 1969 – Ivy Ledbetter Lee – American public relations pioneer and early architect of modern corporate communications. (92)
- 1984 – Sam Peckinpah – American film director known for redefining violence and realism in cinema. (59)
- 1995 – Henny Youngman – American comedian famed for rapid-fire one-liners and vaudeville-era humor. (89)
- 2017 – Sue Grafton – American novelist, best known for her alphabet-series detective novels. (77)
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