On This Day: January 28

This is the 28th day of the year.

Fact of the Day: pancake

The oldest surviving pancake recipe in the English language dates from the 15th century. It describes a thin flat cake of batter, fried on both sides in a pan and usually served either flat or with several stacked. Blin (as in blini and blintze) is Russian for 'pancake' and blintz(e) is from Russian blinets 'little pancake.' Cake itself first meant 'small flat bread roll baked on both sides by being turned - as in pancake.

Holidays

Feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Amadeus of Lausanne, St. Peter Nolasco, St. Peter Thomas, and St. Paulinus of Aquileia.

Events

28 - Roman Emperor Nerva named Trajan, an army general, as his successor.

1521 - The Diet of Worms began, at which Protestant reformer Martin Luther was declared an outlaw by the Roman Catholic church.

1547 - Edward VI, age nine, succeeded as King of England (until 1553) upon the death of Henry VIII.

1782 - Congress approved the Great Seal of the United States.

1902 - The Carnegie Institute was established in Washington D.C.

1908 - Author and activist Julia Ward Howe, composer of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

1915 - The Coast Guard was created by an act of Congress, to fight contraband trade and aid distressed vessels at sea.

1916 - Louis D. Brandeis was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson to the Supreme Court, becoming its first Jewish member.

1918 - The Bolsheviks occupied Helsinki, Finland.

1935 - Iceland became the first country to introduce legalized abortion.

1986 - The space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, killing all seven crew members.

2002 - TAME Flight 120, a Boeing 727-100 crashes in the Andes Mountains in southern Colombia killing 92.

Births

1841 - Sir Henry Morton Stanley, British journalist and explorer of Africa.

1855 - William Seward Burroughs, American inventor.

1884 - Auguste Piccard, Swiss balloonist, physicist, and deep-sea explorer.

1887 - Arthur Rubinstein, Polish-American virtuoso pianist.

1912 - Jackson Pollock, American artist.

1933 - Susan Sontag, American author.

1936 - Alan Alda (born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo), American actor, writer, and director.

1968 - Sarah Ann McLachlan, Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter.

1977 - Takuma Sato, Japanese Formula One driver.

1981 - Elijah Wood, American actor.

Deaths

814 - Charlemagne, King of the Franks from 768 until his death.

1939 - W.B.(William Butler) Yeats, Irish poet, dramatist, and prose writer.

1983 - Frank Forde, an Australian politician and the 15th Prime Minister of Australia.

1986 - Crew of Space Shuttle Challenger: Greg Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Francis R. Scobee, and Michael J. Smith.

2007 - Emma Tillman, the world's oldest living person from January 24-28, 2007.