July 4, 1928: Wealthy Belgian financier Alfred Loewenstein killed after falling from airplaneJuly 17, 1928: Mexican President-Elect Álvaro Obregón assassinated 16 days after election
The NBC-owned experimental television station W2XBS began operations in New York City with test broadcasts of the signals scanned by the RCA Photophone television scanning system. It would begin commercial broadcasts exactly 13 years later, on July 1, 1941, and is now the NBC flagship station WNBC.
New York police ended a dance marathon after 20 days. The $8,600 prize money was distributed among the nine remaining couples.[2]
Died:Frankie Yale, 35, American gangster, was killed by submachine gun fire and a shotgun blast while driving in New York City.
Monday, July 2, 1928
Prominent temperance activist Ernest Cherrington declared Al Smith the "most influential and powerful enemy of Prohibition that has ever appeared in public life" and urged all prohibitionists to unite against the Democratic presidential nominee.[3]
Born:Iven Carl Kincheloe Jr., U.S. Air Force test pilot, aeronautical engineer and Korean War flying ace; in Detroit (d. 1958)
Tuesday, July 3, 1928
Scotish inventor John Logie Baird successfully demonstrate the transmission of colour television for the first time. The demonstration transmitted pictures of eight-year-old Noele Gordon, "wearing different coloured hats".[4]
A prototype of the first commercially available television set, the General Electric "Octagon" scanning disk mechanical television, was unveiled by General Electric for possible manufacture and sale. Only four of the sets, which included a wooden cabinet in the style of furniture similar to radio receivers, were made and the Octagon was never marketed.[5] The initial suggested retail price for the set was $75.00, equivalent to almost $1,200 in 2020.[6]
Alfred Loewenstein, a Belgian financier and one of the wealthiest people in the world at the time with a fortune of 12 million pounds sterling (equivalent to $60 million in U.S. and to $950,000,000 in 2021), was killed after falling out of his privately owned airplane at an altitude of 4,000 feet (1,200 m).[7] At the time, he and six other people were in a Fokker F.VII airliner flying over the English Channel from Croydon to Brussels. Loewenstein had last been seen walking to the rear of the aircraft to use the bathroom and had opened a door opposite the bathroom. His body was found on a beach in France eight days later.
Daredevil Jean Lussier survived the stunt of being swept over Niagara Falls, using a specially constructed rubber ball 6 feet (1.8 m) in diameter. Although the rubber ball was heavily damaged, Lussier sustained only minor bruises after plunging 167 feet (51 m).[8] Previous attempts at going over the Falls had been in wooden barrels; Lussier became only the fourth person to survive the stunt.
Italian aviators Arturo Ferrarin and Carlo Del Prete set a new distance record for sustained flight when they landed north of Natal, Brazil, 7,218 kilometres (4,485 mi) away from Montecelio, Italy where they took off from two days earlier.[9]
The sinking of the Chilean Navy transport Angamos killed 262 of the 269 people on board when the vessel capsized in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the port of Lebu. Only seven people were rescued.[10]Angamos, Chilean Navy website (in Spanish)
The experimental television station W3XK began airing programming broadcast from the laboratory of Charles Francis Jenkins. Broadcasting began at 8:00 p.m. every night except Sunday, and initially consisted of short films lasting a few minutes each. The images were scanned at a resolution of 48 lines.[13]
A Swedish aviator landed at the site of the stranded Italia crew and rescued Einar Lundborg.[14]
Two German aviators set a new flight duration record, staying aloft for 65 hours and 26 minutes flying back and forth between Dessau and Leipzig.[16]
The Plymouth automobile was introduced in an auto show at New York's Madison Square Garden.
The 1928 Pontiac Model Q
Sunday, July 8, 1928
A U.S. Treasury report was released showing that the Internal Revenue Service collected almost $75 million less in taxes in the fiscal year ended June 30 than the year before.[17]
The Russian icebreaker Krasin rescued the seven remaining survivors of the Italia crash. They had been stranded for a total of 48 days.[14][24]
The Bolzano Victory Monument was inaugurated in northern Italy by King Victor Emmanuel III. Thousands protested in cities across the border in Austria, angered by what they saw as another provocation in the Italianization of South Tyrol. No battle had actually been fought at the site and the Latin inscription on the monument read, "Here are the borders of the fatherland, set down the banner. From here we brought to the others language, law and arts."[25][26][27]
Died: Mexican aviator Emilio Carranza, 22, was killed when his plane crashed during a thunderstorm, shortly after taking off from New York at the conclusion of his goodwill tour of the United States.[28]
Five heat deaths were reported in Britain as the temperature hit 92 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. In Paris, the Rue de la Paix was deserted as the thermometer registered 95.[31]
Monday, July 16, 1928
An international cancer conference opened in London.[32]
Robert Sheckley, American science fiction author, in New York City (d. 2005)
Tuesday, July 17, 1928
Mexican president-elect Álvaro Obregón was assassinated at a banquet at La Bombilla, a restaurant in San Ángel by José de León Toral. Obregón, who had been President of Mexico from 1920 to 1924 and had only recently been elected to a new term that would have started on December 1, was shot at least five times in the back by Toral, a caricature artist.[33]
Born:
Vince Guaraldi, jazz pianist and composer known for the TV melody Linus and Lucy; in San Francisco (d. 1976)
Wrongly convicted German-born man Oscar Slater was freed by a Scottish appeals court after serving 19 years for a murder he did not commit.[37]
A government decree in Hungary ordered the country's Romani people to integrate with the general population in dress and language and settle down in fixed abodes.[38]
Government offices in Washington, D.C., closed at noon due to a deadly heat wave.[39]
Died: Greek poet Kostas Karyotakis committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest. Days earlier, the 31-year old poet had written Preveza, where he had been working as a legal administrator, to express his misery.[40]
Saturday, July 21, 1928
A revolt by soldiers in Portugal was put down after an all-night bombardment of the San Jorge barracks.[41]
Died:Ward Crane, 38, American film actor (pneumonia); Dame Ellen Terry, 81, English stage actress
Sunday, July 22, 1928
Japan broke off diplomatic relations with China.[6]
American pilots John Henry Mears and Charles B.D. Collyer completed an aerial circumnavigation of the globe in 23 days 15 hours and 21 minutes and 3 seconds, beating the old record by 4 days and 23 hours.[43]
A crowd of 150,000 marched in Vienna in favor of uniting Austria with Germany.[44]
The United States and China signed a treaty regulating tariff relations.[49] The treaty also essentially granted diplomatic recognition to the Kuomintang government by the United States, though this fact was only agreed upon by legal experts after study.[50]
Born:
Dolphy (stage name for Rodolfo Vera Quízon Sr.) Filipino comedy film actor, known as "The King of Comedy" in the Philippines; in Tondo District, Manila (d. 2012)
Mario Montenegro (stage name for Roger Collin Macalalag), Filipino dramatic film actor; in Pagsanjan (d. 1988)
The day before the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, some international athletes and delegates came around to the Olympic Stadium to get a glimpse of the structure. An altercation broke out between the French group, and a Dutch gatekeeper who punched one of the French officials in the jaw. The French government immediately demanded, and received, an apology from the Dutch Olympic Committee and a promise to discharge the gatekeeper.[56]
Saturday, July 28, 1928
The opening ceremony for the Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, Netherlands was held. France boycotted the ceremony after their delegation arrived at the stadium and saw that the Dutch gatekeeper from the day before had not been discharged as the Olympic Committee had promised. Germany received the biggest ovation from the 45,000 on hand, this being their first Olympics since 1912 after not being invited to the 1920 and 1924 Games.[56]
^"Italy Dedicates War Memorial; Austria Angry". Chicago Daily Tribune. July 13, 1928. p. 13.
^Lantschner, Emma. "History of the South Tyrol Conflict and its Settlement". Tolerance Through Law: Self Governance and Group Rights In South Tyrol. Ed. Jens Woelk, Francesco Palermo and Joseph Marko. Nertherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2008. p. 8. ISBN978-90-04-16302-7.
^Angelucci, Malcolm. "Bolzano Bozen's Monument to Victory: Rhetoric, Sacredness and Profanation". New Perspectives in Italian Cultural Studies, Volume 2: The Arts and History. Ed. Graziella Parati. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 2013. p. 177. ISBN978-1-61147-566-1.
^"Carranza Killed In Crash As He Flies Into Storm In Mexico Hop," The New York Times, July 14, 1928
^"Under U. S. Flag Peru Ends 1883 Spat with Chile". Chicago Daily Tribune. July 14, 1928. p. 5.
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