Today in History: Sunday, October 28, 2012
On Oct. 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France, was dedicated in New York Harbor by President Grover Cleveland.
1636 Harvard College was founded.
1793 Eli Whitney applied for a patent for the cotton gin.
1919 Congress enacted the Volstead Act, which provided for enforcement of Prohibition, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto.
1922 Fascism came to Italy as Benito Mussolini took control of the government.
1958 The Roman Catholic patriarch of Venice, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, was elected pope, taking the name John XXIII.
1962 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev informed the United States that he had ordered the dismantling of Soviet missile bases in Cuba.
1965 Pope Paul VI issued a decree absolving Jews of collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
1980 Republican nominee Ronald Reagan asked voters during a debate with President Jimmy Carter in Cleveland "are you better off than you were four years ago?"
2005 Vice President Dick Cheney's top adviser, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, resigned after he was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements in the CIA leak investigation.
2006 Hall of Fame basketball coach Red Auerbach died at age 89.
2007 Cristina Fernandez was elected Argentina's first woman president.
2009 Angela Merkel was sworn in for a second term as German chancellor.