28 de abril

Dos Pilas was founded by B’ajlaj Chan K’awiil, a prince of Tikal’s royal house who went over to Calakmul. On this day he defeated Tikal’s king Nuun Ujol Chaak, probably his half-brother. The stairway he built to celebrate it speaks of skulls piled into mountains and pools of blood. Long Count…

The see moved off the windy hill of Old Sarum to a green-field site by the Avon. The Earl and Countess of Salisbury laid foundation stones on 28 April 1220, and the church was consecrated on 29 September 1258: thirty-eight years for the whole building, which is why it looks all of a piece.

The shipwright Martín López had thirteen brigantines built in pieces in Tlaxcala, carried over the mountains by thousands of porters, assembled at Texcoco and floated out along a canal dug to the lake. They gave Cortés control of the water around the island.

In his budget speech the Chancellor restored the pre-war parity of 4.86 dollars to the pound. Notes now bought only 400-ounce bars, not coins. Keynes answered with The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill, warning the pound was too dear.

Thor Heyerdahl drifted a balsa raft 101 days from Callao, Peru, to the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotus to argue that Polynesia was settled from South America. It showed a raft could survive the trip; it did not show who settled the islands. Language, archaeology and DNA all trace Polynesians west,…

At about 03:30 North Vietnamese rockets and shells hit the air base. Two Marine guards at the DAO compound, Corporal Charles McMahon and Lance Corporal Darwin Judge, were killed: the last American ground troops to die in Vietnam.

On the morning of 28 April radiation alarms went off at the Forsmark plant, more than 1,000 kilometres from Chernobyl. The staff searched their own plant before realising the contamination came from outside, on the wind from the east, and Sweden asked Moscow for an explanation.

Just after 21:00 the evening news, Vremya, read a statement from TASS of five sentences: an accident at the Chernobyl plant, one reactor damaged, measures under way, aid for those affected, a government commission set up. TASS went on to list American nuclear accidents.

For almost three days nothing was said in public. Pripyat went about a warm Saturday, with weddings and football, while the plant burned three kilometres away.

200,000 songs from all five major labels at 99 cents each, the first legal download store most people used. It sold a million songs in its first week.

The deepest crewed dive yet reported, at 10,928 m on the sub’s own gauge. Limiting Factor dived there four more times in the next ten days.