Today in History, April 28th
On April 28, 1789, mutineers seized HMS Bounty and set Captain Bligh adrift. Plus Muhammad Ali's draft refusal and the launch of iTunes.
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April 28 is best known for 1789, when Fletcher Christian and his followers seized HMS Bounty and set Captain William Bligh adrift in the South Pacific. The same date saw Muhammad Ali refuse induction into the U.S. Army in 1967 and Apple open the iTunes Music Store in 2003.
The big story: Mutiny on the Bounty (1789)
The Bounty had an unusual cargo: breadfruit saplings collected in Tahiti, bound for the West Indies to be grown as cheap food for enslaved workers. About three weeks after leaving Tahiti, near Tonga, master’s mate Fletcher Christian and 25 crewmen took the ship. Captain William Bligh, by many accounts a harsh man with a sharp tongue, was forced into an open boat about 23 feet long with 18 men who stayed loyal. What came next was one of the great feats of navigation. Bligh steered the crowded little boat roughly 3,600 miles and reached Timor in the East Indies on June 14, 1789. The mutineers fared worse. Those who stayed on Tahiti were later caught and taken to England, where three were hanged. Christian, eight other mutineers and a group of Tahitians hid on remote Pitcairn Island. When an American whaler found the colony in 1808, only one of the original mutineers was still living.
More events on April 28
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1862 | Forts Jackson and St. Philip surrendered, and Union forces formally took possession of New Orleans, a major Southern port, days after David Farragut’s fleet ran past the forts. |
| 1945 | Italian partisans shot deposed dictator Benito Mussolini and Clara Petacci after catching them trying to flee Italy. |
| 1947 | Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl and his crew set sail from Peru on the balsa raft Kon-Tiki. They reached Polynesia about three and a half months later. |
| 1965 | U.S. troops landed in the Dominican Republic, a force of more than 22,000. President Lyndon Johnson said he was preventing a communist takeover; many Latin American governments condemned the move. |
| 1967 | Heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali refused induction into the U.S. Army on religious grounds and was stripped of his title. The Supreme Court overturned his draft-evasion conviction in 1971. |
| 1969 | Charles de Gaulle resigned as president of France after voters rejected his proposed constitutional reforms in a referendum. |
| 1988 | An 18-foot section of roof tore off Aloha Airlines Flight 243 at about 24,000 feet over Hawaii. The pilots landed safely on Maui; one flight attendant was lost. |
| 2001 | American businessman Dennis Tito launched aboard Soyuz TM-32 for the International Space Station, the first private individual to pay his own way into space. |
| 2003 | Apple launched the iTunes Music Store with more than 200,000 songs at 99 cents each. |
| 2004 | CBS’s 60 Minutes II aired photographs of U.S. military personnel abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, shocking the American public. |
Born on April 28
- 1758: James Monroe, fifth U.S. president, born in Westmoreland County, Virginia.
- 1878: Lionel Barrymore, actor best remembered as Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life, born in Philadelphia.
- 1926: Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, born in Monroeville, Alabama.
- 1974: Penélope Cruz, Oscar-winning Spanish actress, born in Madrid.
Sources
- Mutiny on the HMS Bounty, History.com
- This Day in History: April 28, History.com
- On This Day: April 28, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Union captures New Orleans, History.com
- Muhammad Ali refuses Army induction, History.com
- Aloha Airlines Flight 243, History.com
- Thor Heyerdahl, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Dennis Tito, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Apple Launches the iTunes Music Store, Apple Newsroom
- Harper Lee, Encyclopaedia Britannica
