50 Fun Facts About 1928

Which drug did Alexander Fleming discover in September 1928 after a holiday left a culture plate moldy?

Penicillin went by the nickname "mould juice" in Fleming's laboratory for months before he gave it its lasting name in March 1929.

Which cartoon character starred in Steamboat Willie, which premiered at a New York theater in November 1928?

Mickey Mouse had already appeared in a test screening of Plane Crazy that May, but it failed to impress and Disney could not find a distributor.

Which everyday food first went on sale in Chillicothe, Missouri, in July 1928, thanks to Otto Rohwedder's new machine?

Sliced bread was briefly banned in the United States in 1943 as a wartime conservation measure.

Which candy did Fleer accountant Walter Diemer invent in 1928, coloring it pink with the only dye on hand?

Bubble gum from Diemer's recipe went on sale as Dubble Bubble, and its sales passed 1.5 million dollars in the first year.

Which American became the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air in June 1928, flying as a passenger?

Amelia Earhart said afterwards that she had been just baggage on the flight, and in 1932 she crossed the same ocean again, this time alone at the controls.

Which child star, born in Santa Monica in April 1928, later served as US ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia?

Shirley Temple also served as Chief of Protocol of the United States, the official who looks after visiting foreign leaders.

Which Maurice Ravel work, commissioned by dancer Ida Rubinstein, was first performed in Paris in November 1928?

Boléro was a sensational success at its premiere, though Rubinstein had first asked Ravel only to orchestrate piano pieces by Isaac Albéniz.

Which Republican won the 1928 US presidential election in a landslide over New York governor Al Smith?

Herbert Hoover beat the first Roman Catholic nominated by a major party, and even won several states of the long-Democratic Solid South.

Which screen hero did Johnny Weissmuller, swimming champion at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, later play twelve times?

Tarzan kept Weissmuller in work from 1932 to 1948, with six films for MGM and six more for RKO.

Which toy did Filipino immigrant Pedro Flores begin manufacturing in Santa Barbara, California, in 1928?

The yo-yo sold so fast that by late 1929 Flores ran three factories with 600 workers, and an entrepreneur named Duncan soon bought the company.

Which treaty, signed in Paris in August 1928, had nations renounce war as an instrument of national policy?

The Kellogg–Briand Pact was concluded outside the League of Nations and remains in effect, and its ban on war was later built into the United Nations Charter.

Which country swapped Arabic script for a new Latin-based alphabet in 1928?

Turkey went on to ban the letters Q, W and X from official documents and street signs until 2013, because the new alphabet had no use for them.

Which country led the parade of nations for the first time at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, starting a lasting tradition?

Greece went first as the birthplace of the Games while the host nation marched last, an order that opening ceremonies have kept ever since.

Which Norwegian polar explorer vanished in June 1928 while flying to rescue the crew of the airship Italia?

Roald Amundsen had crossed the Arctic two years earlier in an airship designed by Umberto Nobile, the very man whose missing crew he died trying to find.

Which British suffragette leader died in June 1928, weeks before women won the vote on equal terms with men?

Emmeline Pankhurst died on 14 June, and the Equal Franchise Act that gave the vote to all women over 21 became law less than three weeks later.

Which pop artist, born to Rusyn immigrant parents in Pittsburgh in August 1928, began as a commercial artist?

Andy Warhol is remembered in his home city by the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist.

Which poet, born in Missouri in April 1928, recited her own work at Bill Clinton's first inauguration?

Maya Angelou was the first poet to recite at a presidential inauguration since Robert Frost did so for John F. Kennedy in 1961.

Which revolutionary, born in Rosario, Argentina, in 1928, qualified as a doctor before joining Fidel Castro's rebels?

Che Guevara toured South America as a medical student, and the poverty, hunger and disease he saw there set him on the road to revolution.

Which figure skater won the first of three straight Olympic titles at St. Moritz in 1928, aged just fifteen?

Sonja Henie had finished eighth in a field of eight at the 1924 Games aged eleven, and she went on to win ten world titles in a row.

In which former capital city was Japan's Emperor Hirohito formally enthroned at the Imperial Palace in November 1928?

Kyoto was the traditional home of the ancient rite, and Hirohito's father had been enthroned at the same palace in 1915.

Which English novelist died in January 1928, his ashes going to Westminster Abbey and his heart to a Dorset churchyard?

Thomas Hardy had wanted to lie beside his first wife, Emma, at Stinsford, so a compromise divided his remains between her grave and Poets' Corner.

Which medical machine, later a lifeline for polio patients, was first used on a child in Boston in October 1928?

The iron lung, developed at Harvard by Philip Drinker and a colleague, was first tried on an eight-year-old girl who was close to death from respiratory failure.

Which British express began running non-stop between London and Edinburgh in May 1928, a record for a scheduled train?

The Flying Scotsman covered the 392 miles without a halt thanks to a corridor through the tender, which let a fresh crew take over halfway.

Which airship, finished at Friedrichshafen in 1928, later ran the first commercial transatlantic passenger service?

Graf Zeppelin flew on hydrogen for nine years and spent five of them carrying passengers and mail between Germany and Brazil.

What name did Charles Kingsford Smith give the Fokker he flew on the first flight across the Pacific in 1928?

Southern Cross was bought from the polar explorer Hubert Wilkins and reached Brisbane from California in three legs, by way of Hawaii and Fiji.

Which Winnie-the-Pooh character first appeared in A. A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner, published in 1928?

Tigger turns up in the second chapter, making a strange noise outside Pooh's house at night and then staying for breakfast.

Which reference work, begun in 1857 and aided by an asylum inmate, finally appeared in ten bound volumes in 1928?

The Oxford English Dictionary had help from William Minor, a Yale-trained surgeon confined to Broadmoor after killing a man in London.

Which author had Lady Chatterley's Lover printed privately in Florence in 1928, decades before Britain allowed its sale?

D. H. Lawrence was long dead when Penguin Books won the 1960 obscenity trial, after which the novel quickly sold three million copies.

Which author published Orlando in October 1928, a novel whose hero lives for centuries and changes sex?

Virginia Woolf drew on the family history of her lover Vita Sackville-West, and set the closing scene on the very day the book was published.

Which film director, born in New York in July 1928, started out as a photographer for Look magazine?

Stanley Kubrick sold his first photo series to Look in 1945, when he was still only sixteen years old.

Which cartoon character, as a toy on a spinning turntable, served as a test image for experimental television in 1928?

Felix the Cat revolved on a phonograph turntable for those early tests, a quarter of a century before his cartoons reached American television in 1953.

Which studio took control of Walt Disney's cartoon star Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in 1928, costing him the character?

Universal kept the rabbit, and the distributor Charles Mintz had also been hiring away Disney's animators behind his back.

Which animal was first heard as well as seen in a Hollywood studio logo with 1928's White Shadows in the South Seas?

The lion was Jackie, the second big cat to front the MGM logo, and his roar was recorded long after he was filmed and first played from a gramophone record.

Which Charlie Chaplin film, released in January 1928, won him a special award at the first Academy Awards?

The Circus first earned Chaplin three nominations, but the Academy took him out of the running and handed him a single special award instead.

Which silent comedian stood still as a house front fell around him in the 1928 film Steamboat Bill, Jr.?

Buster Keaton planned and performed his own stunts, and was spared here only by an open window that passed over the exact spot where he stood.

Which 1928 Vitaphone crime drama was the first full-length feature film with talking all the way through?

Lights of New York was made as a B picture for just $23,000, yet it went on to gross more than a million dollars.

Which Everton striker scored a record 60 league goals in the English football season that ended in May 1928?

Dixie Dean hit his 60 in only 39 games as Everton won the title, and he is still the only player in English football to reach that total in one season.

Which composer brought four Parisian taxi horns to Carnegie Hall for the December 1928 premiere of his new tone poem?

George Gershwin called the piece An American in Paris, and Walter Damrosch conducted the New York Philharmonic at that first performance.

Which stage work by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, source of the song Mack the Knife, opened in Berlin in August 1928?

The Threepenny Opera blended jazz with German dance music, and several of its songs were covered so widely that they became standards.

Which trumpeter's 1928 recording of West End Blues opens with a solo cadenza hailed as a defining moment of early jazz?

Louis Armstrong built that famous introduction from trumpet exercise books he had drilled with his wife, the pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong.

Which chocolate company had employed H. B. Reese, who created his peanut butter cups in 1928 using its chocolate?

Hershey had let Reese go in 1919, when the dairy barn he managed was shut to save money, yet he stayed loyal to its chocolate and the two firms later merged.

Which breakfast cereal went on sale in 1928 and later gained three cartoon elves drawn by illustrator Vernon Grant?

Rice Krispies crackles because milk makes the puffed grains collapse, the noise that inspired the three elf mascots who arrived in 1933.

Which children's television host, born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in 1928, was also an ordained Presbyterian minister?

Fred Rogers took a degree in music in 1951 and only later studied divinity, becoming a minister in 1963.

Which rock and roll pianist, born in New Orleans in February 1928, went on to sell more than 65 million records?

Fats Domino came from a French Creole family, and by 1955 five of his records had each sold more than a million copies.

Which country beat Argentina in the 1928 Olympic football final, the last one held before the World Cup began?

Uruguay won just as the sport was changing: that same May, FIFA's congress in Amsterdam voted to create a World Cup open to all its members.

Which Los Angeles water chief saw his career ended by the deadly collapse of the St. Francis Dam in 1928?

William Mulholland had started out as a ditch tender for the city's water company and was a self-taught engineer; the flood from his dam killed at least 431 people.

Which British physicist published an equation in 1928 that implied antimatter existed before anyone had seen it?

Paul Dirac cracked the problem in about two months, and experiments confirmed antimatter several years later with the discovery of the positron.

Which Kansas senator, a citizen of the Kaw Nation, was elected vice president of the United States in November 1928?

Charles Curtis had been Senate majority leader, and he remains the only Native American ever to serve as vice president.

Which German car company built a rocket car that reached 238 km/h on the power of 24 solid-fuel rockets in May 1928?

Opel ran what is generally considered the world's first large-scale rocket program, and it also bought the first rocket-powered glider that same year.

Which Indian physicist discovered in 1928 that light changes wavelength when deflected inside a transparent material?

C. V. Raman won the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics for the effect, and India celebrates the anniversary of the discovery each year as National Science Day.