On This Day: 28 April

Foundation stone of Salisbury Cathedral laid		1220
Dukedom of Rothesay – the principal Scottish title of the Prince of Wales – is conferred on David Stuart, eldest son of King Robert III of Scotland		1398
Battle of Cerignola: Spanish fleet wins a decisive victory over the French		1503
First volume of Newton's Principia presented to the Royal Society		1686
Pope Clement XII issues a bull condemning Freemasonry		1738
Captain Cook lands at Botany Bay, naming it New South Wales		1770
London's Morning Post advertises the first abortion clinic		1780
Fletcher Christian leads the Mutiny of the Bounty, setting Lt. William Bligh and 18 sailors adrift		1789
France invades the Austrian Netherlands (modern Belgium and Luxembourg), beginning the French Revolutionary Wars		1792
USA and Britain conclude the Rush–Bagot agreement		1817
Chinese and Irish laborers for the Central Pacific Railroad, working on the First Transcontinental Railroad, lay ten miles of track in one day – a feat that has never been matched		1869
Billy the Kid escapes from Lincoln County jail in Mesilla, New Mexico		1881
League of Nations founded		1919
Leslie Irvine makes the first free–fall parachute descent at McCook Field, Ohio		1919
The Empire Stadium, Wembley, is opened		1923
Crown Prince Farouk, 16, proclaimed King of Egypt on the death of his father King Fu'ad, aged 68. (Farouk was deposed by Nasser in 1952)		1936
Nine German E–boats attack US and UK units during Exercise Tiger, the rehearsal for the Normandy landings, killing 946		1944
Benito Mussolini, and his mistress Clara Petacci, are assassinated by Italian partisans in Milan		1945
Thor Heyerdhal sets sail from Callao, Peru in Kon–Tiki, to prove that it was possible for ancient South American mariners to have populated the islands of the South Pacific		1947
Dwight D. Eisenhower resigns as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO		1952
Japan granted self–government, after being deprived of it since World War II		1953
US troops sent to the Dominican Republic to protect US citizens and prevent a Communist revolution		1965
Muhammad Ali refuses his induction into the US army		1967
Hair opens on Broadway		1968
Charles de Gaulle resigns after eleven years as President of France, following his defeat in a referendum on governmental reforms		1969
Anwar as–Sadat appointed acting President of Egypt		1970
Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon begins a record–breaking 741–week run in the US Billboard album chart – entering at No.1		1971
Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan–Carl Raspe are jailed for life, having been found guilty on four counts of murder and more than 30 of attempted murder, in the Red Army Faction trial in Stuttgart		1977
Soviet news agency TASS acknowledges that there has been an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, after high levels of radiation are detected at a nuclear power plant in Sweden		1986
Sian Edwards, 28, becomes the first woman to conduct the orchestra at Covent Garden Opera House		1988
Joe Slovo, Lithuanian–born leader of the South African Communist Party, returns to Pretoria after 27 years in exile		1990
In one of the most damaging spy cases in US history, former CIA agent Aldrich Ames is sentenced to life imprisonment, after admitting that he sold secrets to the Soviet Union and then Russia		1994
33 shot dead by lone gunman Martin Bryant in Port Arthur, Tasmania		1996
President Bill Clinton gives a 4½–hour videotaped testimony to the Whitewater investigation		1996
Vuk Draskovic, Yugoslavia's deputy prime minister, dismissed after saying that President Milosevich should accept that NATO could not be beaten		1999
Dennis Tito, 60, a businessman and former NASA employee, blasts off from Kazakhstan, after paying $20 million (£14 million) to become the first 'space tourist'		2001
Shoaib Akhtar, the "Rawalpindi Express", becomes the first 100mph bowler – registering 100.4 mph to beat Jeff Thomson's record of 99.8 mph set in 1976		2002
CBS News releases evidence of torture and abuse by US military and CIA personnel at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq		2004

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On This Day: 28 April