January 28 birthdays & history

Famous people born on January 28

• 1955Nicolas Sarkozy, French lawyer and politician, 23rd President of France
• 1912Jackson Pollock, American painter
• 1978Gianluigi Buffon, Italian footballer
• 1853José Martí, Cuban journalist, poet, and theorist
• 1873Colette, French novelist and journalist
• 1936Ismail Kadare, Albanian novelist, poet, essayist, and playwright
• 1981Elijah Wood, American actor and producer
• 1940Carlos Slim, Mexican businessman and philanthropist, founded Grupo Carso
• 1887Arthur Rubinstein, Polish-American pianist and educator
• 1936Alan Alda, American actor, director, and writer

What happened on January 28

• 1568Delegates of the Three Nations of Transylvania adopted the Edict of Torda, allowing local communities to elect their preachers freely, in an unprecedented act of religious tolerance.
• 1754The word serendipity, derived from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, was coined by Horace Walpole in a letter to a friend.
• 1813Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is first published in the United Kingdom.
• 1851Northwestern University becomes the first chartered university in Illinois.
• 1855A locomotive on the Panama Canal Railway runs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean for the first time.
• 1878Yale Daily News becomes the first independent daily college newspaper in the United States.
• 1902The Carnegie Institution of Washington is founded in Washington, D.C., with a $10 million gift from Andrew Carnegie.
• 1915An act of the U.S. Congress creates the United States Coast Guard as a branch of the United States Armed Forces.
• 1916The province of Manitoba passed a law that first granted some Canadian women the right to vote.
• 1933Choudhry Rahmat Ali published a pamphlet in which he called for the creation of a Muslim state in north-western India that he termed "Pakstan".
• 1958The Lego Group, a Danish toy company, filed a patent in Denmark for the design of Lego bricks.
• 1981U.S. president Ronald Reagan lifted price controls from petroleum products, contributing to the 1980s oil glut.

Also observed on January 28

• Data Privacy Day