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Today in History, December 28th

On December 28, 1895, the Lumière brothers held the first paid movie screening in Paris. Plus the Messina earthquake and the Endangered Species Act.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 2 min read Sources checked

Published December 28, 2025 · Last updated November 10, 2026

December 28 is best known as the day in 1895 when the Lumière brothers charged admission to a movie screening in Paris, the birth of commercial cinema. The date also saw the Messina earthquake in 1908 and President Richard Nixon sign the Endangered Species Act in 1973.

The big story: The Lumière Brothers Sell the First Movie Tickets (1895)

Thomas Edison had already shown that pictures could move, but his Kinetoscope was a peephole box that only one person could look into at a time. Two French brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumière, wanted something better. Their father, Antoine, had seen an Edison machine in 1894, and Louis soon patented the Cinématographe, a camera and projector in one that was smaller and lighter than Edison’s gear and used less film. The brothers showed it off in March 1895 with a short film of workers streaming out of the family factory. Then, on December 28, 1895, they rented space at the Grand Café in Paris and did something new: they charged the public to watch. The program was a string of short scenes from ordinary French life, projected on a screen for a whole room at once. That shared experience, strangers in the dark watching the same flickering images, is still what going to the movies means.

More events on December 28

Year	What happened
1793	Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense, was arrested in Revolutionary France and charged with treason.
1832	John C. Calhoun became the first U.S. vice president to resign, after being elected to the Senate.
1908	An earthquake and tsunami struck the Strait of Messina in southern Italy, killing an estimated 100,000 people.
1917	H.L. Mencken published a made-up history of the bathtub, and newspapers widely repeated its invented “facts.”
1944	Hungary’s provisional government declared war on Germany.
1958	The Baltimore Colts beat the New York Giants 23-17 in overtime to win the NFL championship.
1973	President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law.
1973	Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, an account of the Soviet prison camp system, was published in Paris.
1981	The first American “test-tube baby” was born in Norfolk, Virginia.
2016	Actress Debbie Reynolds died in Los Angeles, one day after the sudden death of her daughter, Carrie Fisher.

Born on December 28

1856: Woodrow Wilson, 28th president of the United States.
1922: Stan Lee, comic book writer and publisher who co-created many Marvel heroes.
1954: Denzel Washington, Oscar-winning actor and director.