What happened on December 28 ?

418 - St. Boniface I becomes Pope.

1065 - Westminster Abbey is consecrated.

1308 - The reign of Emperor Hanazono, emperor of Japan, begins.

1612 - Galileo Galilei becomes the first astronomer to observe the planet Neptune when it was in conjunction with Jupiter, yet he mistakenly catalogued it as a fixed star because of its extremely slow motion along the ecliptic at that time. Neptune was not truly discovered until 1846, about 234 years after Galileo first sighted it with his telescope.

1832 - John C. Calhoun becomes the first Vice President of the United States to resign.

1835 - Osceola led his Seminole warriors in Florida into the Second Seminole War against the U.S. Army.

1836 - South Australia and Adelaide are founded.

1836 - Spain recognizes independence of Mexico.

1846 - Iowa is admitted as the 29th U.S. state.

1869 - William E. Semple of Mt. Vernon, Ohio patents chewing gum.

1879 - The Tay Bridge Disaster: The central part of the Tay Rail Bridge in Dundee, Scotland collapses as a train passed over it, killing 75.

1895 - The Lumière brothers have their first paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des Capucines marking the debut of the cinema.

1897 - The play Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand, premieres in Paris.

1902 - The first indoor professional American football game is played in New York City at Madison Square Garden.

1908 - An earthquake rocks Messina, Sicily killing over 75,000.

1928 - The first municipally owned streetcars take to the streets in San Francisco.

1945 - The U.S. Congress officially recognizes the Pledge of Allegiance.

1950 - The Peak District becomes the United Kingdom's first National Park.

1968 - Israeli commando troops destroy 13 civilian aircraft at Beirut International Airport.

1974 - Senegalese marxist group Reenu-Rew founds the political movement And-Jëf at a clandestine congress.

1981 - The first American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, is born in Norfolk, Virginia.

1981 - The HBO pay cable television service expanded its schedule offering to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

1989 - A magnitude 5.6 earthquake hits Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, killing 13 people.

1995 - CompuServe sets a precedent by blocking access to sex-oriented newsgroups after being pressured by German prosecutors.

1999 - Saparmurat Niyazov is proclaimed President for Life in Turkmenistan.

2000 - U.S. retail giant Montgomery Ward announces it is going out of business after 128 years.

2005 - A U.S. immigration judge orders John Demjanjuk deported to the Ukraine for crimes against humanity committed during World War II.