Today in History in 1867 – The United States claims Midway Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, northwest of Hawaii. This is the first US annexation of territory outside the North American continent; and in 2008 the Detroit Lions become the first team with no wins and 16 losses after their loss to the Green Bay Packers in week 17.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

December 28 is the 362nd day of the year (363rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are three days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

418 – St. Boniface I becomes Pope.

457 – Majorian is crowned West Roman Emperor.

484 – Alaric II becomes King of the Visigoths.

856 – A Viking attack on Paris occurs.

893 – An earthquake destroys the city of Dvin, Armenia.

1065 – Westminster Abbey is consecrated.

1308 – The reign of Emperor Hanazono, the 95th imperial ruler of Japan, began.

1612 – Galileo Galilei was the first astronomer to observe the planet Neptune when it was in conjunction with Jupiter, yet there is dispute as to whether he mistakenly catalogued it as a fixed star because of its extremely slow motion along the ecliptic at that time. Neptune was not officially discovered until 1846, about 234 years after Galileo first sighted it with his telescope.

1768 – Taksin is crowned King of Siam.

1832 – John C. Calhoun becomes the first Vice President of the United States to resign.

1835 – Osceola led his Seminole warriors in Florida into the Second Seminole War against the U.S. Army.

1836 – South Australia and Adelaide are founded

1836 – Spain recognizes independence of Mexico.

1846 – Iowa is admitted as the 29th U.S. state.

1867 – The United States claims Midway Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, northwest of Hawaii. This is the first US annexation of territory outside the North American continent.

1879 – The Tay Rail Bridge Disaster: The central part of the Tay Rail Bridge in Dundee, Scotland collapses as a train passes over it, killing 75.

1885 – The Indian National Congress is founded.

1895 – The Lumiere brothers have their first paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des Capucines—this date is commonly considered the debut of the cinema.

1895 – Wilhelm Roentgen publishes a paper detailing his discovery of a new type of radiation later known as X–Rays.

1897 – The play Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand, premieres in Paris.

1902 – The first indoor professional American football game is played in New York City at Madison Square Garden.

1904 – Alphonse Louis Nicolas Borrelly discovers a comet that is named after him.

1908 – An earthquake rocks Messina, Sicily, killing over 75,000 people.

1918 – Constance Markievicz, while detained at Holloway prison, becomes the first woman to be elected an MP in the British House of Commons.

1935 – Pravda publishes a letter by Pavel Postyshev, who revives the New Year tree tradition in the Soviet Union.

1944 – Maurice Richard becomes the first player to score eight goals in a single ice hockey match.

1945 – The U.S. Congress officially recognizes the Pledge of Allegiance.

1948 – The DC–3 airliner NC16002 disappears 50 miles south of Miami, Florida.

1950 – The Peak District becomes the United Kingdom's first National Park.

1958 – Greatest Game Ever Played: The Baltimore Colts win in overtime against the New York Giants.

1972 – Having already led the country since the late 1940s, Kim Il–Sung is declared President of North Korea.

1973 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn publishes The Gulag Archipelago.

1973 – The US Endangered Species Act is passed in the US.

1974 – A magnitude 6.2 earthquake strikes Pakistan.

1978 – Heavy snowfall affects Northern Europe.

1981 – The first American test–tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, is born (Norfolk, Virginia).

1984 – The Indian National Congress wins elections in India.

1989 – A magnitude 5.6 earthquake strikes Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.

1991 – Nine are crushed while a crowd pushes their way into a basketball game at City College of New York.

1991 – Sonic the Hedgehog Game Gear version is released in Japan.

1995 – CompuServe sets a precedent by blocking access to sex–oriented newsgroups after being pressured by German prosecutors.

1998 – Claudia Benton of West University Place, Texas is murdered in her home by Angel Maturino Resendiz. This is Angel's third victim in his third incident.

1999 – Saparmurat Niyazov is proclaimed President for Life in Turkmenistan.

2000 – Adrian Năstase becomes the Prime Minister of Romania.

2000 – U.S. retail giant Montgomery Ward announces it is going out of business after 128 years.

2007 – Nepal announces its intention to become a Republic.

2008 – War in Somalia: Militaries of Somalia's transitional federal government take Mogadishu unopposed.

2008 – The Detroit Lions become the first team with no wins and 16 losses after their loss to the Green Bay Packers in week 17.

2009 – 43 people are killed in a suicide bombing in Karachi.

2010 – Arab Spring: Protests begin in Algeria.

2011 – Turkish war planes bomb 34 Kurds of Turkish nationality in the district of Uludere.

2012 – Jiroemon Kimura surpasses Christian Mortensen's record as the oldest–recorded man ever.

2014 – Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 disappears on a flight from Surabaya, Java, Indonesia to Singapore, with 162 people on board. It is now known to have crashed with the loss of all of the people on board.

2014 – A ferry travelling from Patras, Greece to Ancona, Italy, catches fire in the Adriatic Sea west of the island of Corfu. Five people are killed, while hundreds are rescued in difficult weather conditions.

2015 – War in Iraq: Iraqi forces retake the city of Ramadi from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant forces.

2017 – Anti–government protests begin across Iran.

2017 – 41 people are killed in a bomb attack in Kabul, Afghanistan.

2017 – A fire at an apartment block in The Bronx, New York City, kills 12 people.