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Today in History, October 28th

On October 28, 1886, President Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty. Plus Harvard's founding and the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

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

Published October 28, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

October 28 is best known for 1886, when President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. The date also marks the founding of Harvard in 1636 and the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when Nikita Khrushchev agreed to pull Soviet missiles out of Cuba.

The big story: The Statue of Liberty is dedicated (1886)

Lady Liberty arrived as a kit. The statue was a gift from the people of France, meant to honor the alliance between the two countries during the American Revolution. French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi designed the figure, and its inner framework was the work of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and Gustave Eiffel, the same engineer behind the Paris tower. In June 1885 it reached New York taken apart and packed into more than 200 crates, weighing about 225 tons in all. Reassembled on its pedestal, the statue stood 151 feet tall. On October 28, 1886, President Grover Cleveland presided over the dedication. The meaning of the statue grew over time. In 1903 a bronze plaque bearing Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus” was placed in the pedestal, giving the statue the words most people now link to it. It was named a national monument in 1924.

More events on October 28

Year	What happened
1636	The Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony voted to establish the school that became Harvard University (Old Style).
1787	Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart finished the overture to his opera Don Giovanni the night before its premiere in Prague.
1897	The Osage Nation completed the first oil-producing well on its land.
1919	Congress overrode President Woodrow Wilson’s veto and passed the Volstead Act, which set the rules for enforcing Prohibition.
1940	Benito Mussolini’s Italian forces invaded Greece, beginning a costly campaign.
1962	Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove Soviet missiles from Cuba, ending the Cuban Missile Crisis.
1965	The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, was completed.
1998	President Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act into law.
2007	Cristina Fernández de Kirchner became the first woman elected president of Argentina.

Born on October 28

1914: Jonas Salk, physician who developed the first safe and effective polio vaccine, born in New York City.
1955: Bill Gates, cofounder of Microsoft, born in Seattle.
1967: Julia Roberts, film actress, born in Smyrna, Georgia.