1928

Events

January

• January – British bacteriologist Frederick Griffith reports the results of Griffith's experiment, indirectly demonstrating that DNA is the genetic material.
• January 1 – Eastern Bloc emigration and defection: Boris Bazhanov, Joseph Stalin's personal secretary, crosses the border to Iran to defect from the Soviet Union.
• January 17 – The OGPU arrests Leon Trotsky in Moscow; he assumes a status of passive resistance and is exiled with his family.
• January 26 – The volcanic island Anak Krakatau appears.

  February

• February – The Ford River Rouge Complex at Dearborn, Michigan, an automobile plant begun in 1917, is completed as the world's largest integrated factory.
• February 8 – Scottish-born inventor John Logie Baird broadcasts a transatlantic television signal from London to Hartsdale, New York.
• February 11 – 19 – The 1928 Winter Olympics are held in St. Moritz, Switzerland, the first as a separate event. Sonja Henie of Norway wins her first gold medal, in women's figure skating.
• February 20 – The Japanese general election produces a hung parliament.
• February 25 – Charles Jenkins Laboratories of Washington, D.C., becomes the first holder of a television license from the Federal Radio Commission.

  March

• March 15
• * March 15 incident: The Japanese government cracks down on socialists and communists, arresting over 1,000 people.
• * Chinese warlord Shi Yousan sets fire to the Shaolin Monastery in Henan, destroying some of its ancient structures and artifacts.
• March 21 – Charles Lindbergh is presented with the Medal of Honor for his first transatlantic flight.
• March 22 – The Muslim Brotherhood is founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna.
• March 24 – Excavation work begins after the old Canaanite city of Ugarit is accidentally rediscovered.

  April

• April 10 – Pineapple Primary: The United States Republican Party primary elections in Chicago are preceded by violence, bombings and assassination attempts.
• April 12 – A bomb attack against Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini in Milan kills 17 bystanders.
• April 13 – The West Plains, Missouri Dance Hall explosion occurs.
• April 12 – 14 – The first east–west transatlantic flight by aeroplane takes place from Dublin, Ireland, to Greenly Island, Canada, using the German Junkers W 33 Bremen.
• April 14 – An earthquake occurs in Chirpan, Bulgaria, followed four days later by another in Plovdiv. Between them, they destroy more than 21,000 buildings, and kill almost 130 people.
• April 19 – Publication of the original Oxford English Dictionary is completed after 70 years with issue of the last section in Oxford.
• April 22 – An Ms 6.0 earthquake affects southern Greece with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX, leaving 20 dead, and destroying 3,000 homes in Corinth; a non-destructive tsunami is also observed.
• April 28 – 28 inches of snow fall in southern-central Pennsylvania, United States.

  May

• May 3 – Jinan incident: An armed conflict between the Imperial Japanese Army and the Kuomintang's southern army occurs in Jinan, China.
• May 7 – Passage of the Representation of the People Act in the United Kingdom lowers the voting age for women from 30 to 21, giving them equal suffrage with men from July 2.
• May 10 – The first regular schedule of television programming begins in Schenectady, New York, by General Electric's television station W2XB.
• May 15 – The animated short Plane Crazy is released by Disney Studios in Los Angeles, featuring the first appearances of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
• May 23 – A bomb attack against the Italian consulate in Buenos Aires, Argentina, kills 22 and injures 43.
• May 24 – The airship Italia crashes at the North Pole; one of the occupants is Italian general Umberto Nobile. A rescue expedition leaves for the Pole on May 30. Roald Amundsen will be among those who lose their lives in the search for survivors.
• May 30 – Rookie driver Louis Meyer wins his first Indianapolis 500.
• May 31 – South Africa adopts a new national flag, based upon the Van Riebeeck flag or Prinsevlag, to replace the Red Ensign. It later became infamously known as the "apartheid flag" for being the flag of South Africa under Apartheid from 1948 to 1994.

  June

• June 4 – Huanggutun incident: Zhang Zuolin, a warlord, is killed by Japanese agents in China.
• June 8 – By seizing Beijing and renaming it Běipíng, the National Revolutionary Army puts an end to the 'Fengtian warlords' Beiyang government there.
• June 9
• * Australian aviator Charles Kingsford Smith and his crew complete the first flight across the Pacific Ocean, from the mainland United States to Australia, in the Fokker F.VII aircraft Southern Cross. Having left Oakland, California on May 31, they reach Brisbane via Honolulu and Fiji.
• * Ellis Park Stadium, a well-known sport venue of South Africa, officially opens in Johannesburg.
• June 14 – Students take over the medical wing of Rosario University in Argentina.
• June 17 – 18 – Aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to make a successful transatlantic flight, as a passenger in a Fokker F.VIIb/3m piloted by Wilmer Stultz, from Newfoundland to Wales.
• June 20 – Puniša Račić kills three opposition representatives in the Yugoslavian Parliament, and injures three others, in a gun attack.
• June 24 – A Swedish aeroplane rescues some survivors of the Italian North Pole expedition, including Umberto Nobile. The Soviet icebreaker Krasin saves the rest July 12.
• June 28
• * The keel of the first 1,000 ft -long ocean liner, Oceanic, for the British White Star Line, is laid by Harland and Wolff in Belfast; construction is delayed, and cancelled on 23 July 1929.
• * The International Railway switches to one-man crews for its trolleys in Canada.
• June 29 – At the 1928 Democratic National Convention in Houston, Governor of New York Al Smith becomes the first Catholic nominated by a major political party for President of the United States.

  July

• July 2 – Charles Jenkins Laboratories' W3XK station begins broadcasting on 6.42 MHz, using 48 lines.
• July 3 – Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrates the world's first colour television transmission in Glasgow.
• July 7 – The first machine-sliced and machine-wrapped loaf of bread is sold in Chillicothe, Missouri, United States, using Otto Frederick Rohwedder's technology.
• July 17 – José de León Toral assassinates Álvaro Obregón, president-elect of Mexico.
• July 25 – The United States recalls its troops from China.
• July 28 – August 12 – The 1928 Summer Olympics are held in Amsterdam, opening with the lighting of the Olympic flame. Women's athletics and gymnastics debut at these games, and discus thrower Halina Konopacka of Poland becomes the first female Olympic gold medal winner for a track or field event. Coca-Cola enters Europe as sponsor of the games.

  August

• August – Margaret Mead's influential cultural anthropology text, Coming of Age in Samoa, is published in the U.S.
• August 2 – Italy and Ethiopia sign the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty.
• August 16 – Serial killer Carl Panzram is arrested in Washington, D.C., for burglary. Later it will be discovered that he has committed multiple murders, rapes and other major crimes.
• August 22 – Al Smith accepts the Democratic nomination for the US presidential election, with WGY/W2XB simulcasting the event on radio and television.
• August 26 – In Scotland, May Donoghue finds the remains of a snail in her ginger beer, leading to the landmark negligence case Donoghue v Stevenson.
• August 27 – The Kellogg–Briand Pact is signed in Paris, the first treaty to outlaw aggressive war.
• August 29 – F.C. Motagua is founded as an Association football club in Honduras.

  September

• September 1 – Ahmet Zogu, President of the Albanian Republic, declares the country to be a constitutional monarchy, the Albanian Kingdom, with himself as King Zog I.
• September 3 – Philo Farnsworth demonstrates to the press in San Francisco the world's first working all-electronic television system, employing electronic scanning in both the pickup and display devices.
• September 11 – The first broadcast of a play by television, melodrama The Queen's Messenger, on General Electric's W2XAD from Schenectady, New York, utilising techniques created by Ernst Alexanderson. WMAK begins broadcasting in Buffalo, New York.
• September 12 – The Okeechobee hurricane hits Guadeloupe, killing 1,200 people.
• September 16 – The Okeechobee hurricane kills at least 2,500 people in Florida.
• September 25 – Paul and Joseph Galvin incorporate the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation.
• September 28 – Scottish-born microbiologist Alexander Fleming, at St Mary's Hospital, London, accidentally rediscovers the antibiotic which he will call Penicillin.

  October

• October – The women's organisation Gruaja Shiqiptare is founded in Albania, with Princess Senije as its chair.
• October 1 – Joseph Stalin launches the first five-year plan ; the average nonfarm wage falls by 50% in the Soviet Union.
• October 2
• *Josemaría Escrivá founds Opus Dei.
• *Arvid Lindman returns as Prime Minister of Sweden, with his right-wing rival Ernst Trygger as Foreign Minister of Sweden.
• October 7 – Haile Selassie is crowned king of Abyssinia.
• October 8 – Chiang Kai-shek is named as Generalissimo of the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China.
• October 12 – An iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Children's Hospital, Boston.
• October 22 – The Phi Sigma Alpha fraternity is founded at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus.
• October 25 – The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is formally established, with the adoption of the "Statutes of the International Red Cross"
• October 28 – The Second Youth Congress is held in Batavia, Dutch East Indies by young Indonesian nationalists, resulting in the Youth Pledge. The Indonesian national anthem, "Indonesia Raya", is introduced at the congress.