Colts win NFL title in ‘Greatest Game Ever Played’

On December 28, 1958, the Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants, 23-17, in overtime in the NFL Championship Game—a back-and-forth thriller that later is billed as “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” The nationally televised championship—the league’s first overtime contest—is watched by 45 million viewers and fuels the NFL’s meteroric rise in popularity.

“Never has there been a game like this one,” Tex Maule of Sports Illustrated wrote. “When there are so many high points, it is not easy to pick the highest.”

According to the New York Daily News, gross receipts for the sellout at Yankee Stadium in New York, including television and radio, were $698,646. That resulted in a a $4,718.77 bonus for each Colts player, $3,111.33 for each Giant.

READ MORE: The greatest games in sports history

The star of the game was Colts quarterback and future Hall of Famer Johnny Unitas, who completed 26 of 40 passes for 349 yards and a touchdown—impressive statistics in the pre-Super Bowl era. 

Near the end of regulation, Unitas led the Colts on a drive from their 14-yard line to tie the score. In overtime, he led a 13-play, 80-yard drive that culminated with a one-yard touchdown run by Alan “The Horse” Ameche.

When asked about the winning drive, in which he completed four of his five passing attempts, Unitas responded with his trademark confidence, “Why shouldn’t I have passed then? After all, you don’t have to risk anything when you know where you’re passing.” 

“The Greatest Game Ever Played” was sloppy, with the teams combining for eight fumbles (six lost). But the championship featured 16 future Hall of Famers besides Unitas. Among them were Giants running back (and future TV star) Frank Gifford andassistant coach Vince Lombardi, who went on to lead the Green Bay Packers to five NFL titles.

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Dallas Cowboys win playoff game on ‘Hail Mary’ pass

On December 28, 1975, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach throws a 50-yard touchdown pass to Drew Pearson in the waning seconds to beat the Minnesota Vikings in a playoff game, 17-14. Afterward, Staubach calls the miraculous touchdown a “Hail Mary,” thus cementing the term for a desperation pass in the sports lexicon. 

 “It was a play you hit one in a hundred times if you’re lucky,” Staubach told reporters after the game in Bloomington, Minnesota. “I guess it’s a Hail Mary pass. You throw it up and pray he catches it.” 

READ MORE: 7 of the Greatest Hail Mary Passes of All Time

Said Dallas coach Tom Landry: “Our only hope was to throw and hope for a miracle.” 

The play was controversial. Minnesota contended Pearson pushed off against defensive back Nate Wright and should have been called for pass interference.

“It was just as clear as day and night,” Minnesota coach Bud Grant said. 

But Pearson said Wright was the one who pushed. “… I might have put my hands on him,” he said. “The ball hit my hands and then something hit my arm. The ball slid down and stuck between my elbow and my hip. That’s all there was to it. It was a lucky catch.”

In 1963, after a victory by his Navy team over Michigan, Staubach described a touchdown as “a Hail Mary play.” But the term didn’t become widespread until after his miraculous completion against the Vikings. 

Since 1975, many quarterbacks have completed Hail Marys.

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Endangered Species Act signed into law

On December 28, 1973, President Richard Nixon signs the Endangered Species Act into law. The act, which Nixon called for the previous year, is considered one of the most significant and influential environmental laws in American history.

The government started taking action to protect endangered species in the early 1900s, as it became apparent that hunting, industry and deforestation were capable of wiping out entire species. The near-extinction of the bison, once extremely common in North America, provided ample evidence that such protections were necessary, as did the death of the last passenger pigeon in 1901. Early acts of Congress focused mostly on animals that were commonly hunted, and although the Department of the Interior began publishing a list of endangered species in 1967, it did not have the adequate powers to help animals in need.

READ MORE: How Nixon Became the Unlikely Champion of the Endangered Species Act

Recognizing the need for proactive legislation, Nixon asked Congress to expand protections. The result was the 1973 Endangered Species Act. Among other things, it mandated that the federal government keep a list of all species in need of protection, prohibited federal agencies from jeopardizing such species or their habitats, and empowered the government to do more to protect wildlife. Though the Act only applied to the actions of the federal government, it was wildly successful. In its first 30 years, the less than one percent of the plants and animals added to the Endangered Species List went extinct, while more than 100 showed a 90 percent recovery rate. Over 200,000 acres of crucial habitats have also been protected under the act. The ESA is widely regarded as the strongest endangered species law in the world, and one of the most successful pieces of environmental legislation in history.

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First American “test-tube baby” is born


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Year
1981
Month Day
December 28

On December 28, 1981, the first American “test-tube baby,” a child born as a result of in-vitro fertilization, is born in Norfolk, Virginia. Considered a miracle at the time, births like that of Elizabeth Jordan Carr are now common.

In-vitro fertilization is a process in which doctors fertilize an egg outside of a woman’s body and implant the developing embryo in the womb. In this way, women with damaged or missing Fallopian tubes, which carry fertilized eggs from ovaries to the uterus, are able to become pregnant. Doctors carried out the first successful in-vitro fertilization of a rabbit in 1959, and the first human test-tube baby was born in England in 1978. One of the doctors responsible, Dr. Robert Edwards, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2010.

A number of successful IVF-induced pregnancies followed, leading the husband-and-wife team of Drs. Howard and Georgeanna Jones to open an IVF clinic at Eastern Virginia Medical School in 1980. “I think this is a day of hope,” Howard Jones said after Carr and her mother were declared to be in perfect health, citing the roughly 600,000 American women who could theoretically give birth thanks to the procedure.

IVF was not without its critics. Many in the medical community were cautious about “playing God.” IVF drew condemnation from figures like Rev. Jerry Falwell and others in the “Moral Majority,” a socially conservative movement that was in its ascendancy in the early 1980s. The Roman Catholic Church opposes IVF on the grounds that it separates marital sex from the act of conception, while others continue to criticize what they perceive as an industry built around selling IVF to couples with fertility issues. Nonetheless, the procedure has been refined over several decades and is now fairly common, leading to an estimated 5 million total births as of a 2012 study. It is estimated that IVF now accounts for over one percent of American births every year.

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Worst European earthquake ever recorded


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Year
1908
Month Day
December 28

At dawn, the most destructive earthquake in recorded European history strikes the Straits of Messina in southern Italy, leveling the cities of Messina in Sicily and Reggio di Calabria on the Italian mainland. The earthquake and tsunami it caused killed an estimated 100,000 people.

Sicily and Calabria are known as la terra ballerina–“the dancing land”–for the periodic seismic activity that strikes the region. In 1693, 60,000 people were killed in southern Sicily by an earthquake, and in 1783 most of the Tyrrenian coast of Calabria was razed by a massive earthquake that killed 50,000. The quake of 1908 was particularly costly in terms of human life because it struck at 5:20 a.m. without warning, catching most people at home in bed rather than in the relative safety of the streets or fields.

The main shock, registering an estimated 7.5 magnitude on the Richter scale, caused a devastating tsunami with 40-foot waves that washed over coastal towns and cities. The two major cities on either side of the Messina Straits–Messina and Reggio di Calabria–had some 90 percent of their buildings destroyed. Telegraph lines were cut and railway lines were damaged, hampering relief efforts. To make matters worse, the major quake on the 28th was followed by hundreds of smaller tremors over subsequent days, bringing down many of the remaining buildings and injuring or killing rescuers. On December 30, King Victor Emmanuel III arrived aboard the battleship Napoli to inspect the devastation.

Meanwhile, a steady rain fell on the ruined cities, forcing the dazed and injured survivors, clad only in their nightclothes, to take shelter in caves, grottoes, and impromptu shacks built out of materials salvaged from the collapsed buildings. Veteran sailors could barely recognize the shoreline because long stretches of the coast had sunk several feet into the Messina Strait.

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John C. Calhoun resigns vice presidency


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Year
1832
Month Day
December 28

Citing political differences with President Andrew Jackson and a desire to fill a vacant Senate seat in South Carolina, John C. Calhoun becomes the first vice president in U.S. history to resign the office.

Born near Abbeville, South Carolina, in 1782, Calhoun was an advocate of states’ rights and a defender of the agrarian South against the industrial North. Calhoun served as secretary of war under President James Monroe and in 1824 ran for the presidency. However, bitter partisan attacks from other contenders forced him out of the race, and he had to settle for the vice presidency under President John Quincy Adams. In 1828, he was again elected vice president while Andrew Jackson won the presidency. Calhoun soon found himself politically isolated from national affairs under President Jackson. On December 12, 1832, Calhoun was elected to fill a South Carolina Senate seat left vacant after the resignation of Senator Robert Hayne. Sixteen days later, he resigned the vice presidency.

For the rest of his political life, Calhoun defended the slave-plantation system against the growing anti-slavery stance of the free states. In the early 1840s, while secretary of state under President John Tyler, he secured the admission of Texas into the Union as a slave state.

Together with Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun dominated American political life in the first half of the 19th century.

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America’s first Labor Day


Updated:
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Year
1869
Month Day
December 28

The Knights of Labor, a labor union of tailors in Philadelphia, hold the first Labor Day ceremonies in American history. The Knights of Labor was established as a secret society of Pennsylvanian tailors earlier in the year and later grew into a national body that played an important role in the labor movement of the late 19th century.

The first annual observance of Labor Day was organized by the American Federation of Labor in 1884, which resolved in a convention in Chicago that “the first Monday in September be set aside as a laborer’s national holiday.” In 1887, Oregon became the first state to designate Labor Day a holiday, and in 1894 Congress designated the first Monday in September a legal holiday for all federal employees and the residents of the District of Columbia.

READ MORE: Labor Day: Facts, Meaning & Founding

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First commercial movie screened


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Year
1895
Month Day
December 28

On December 28, 1895, the world’s first commercial movie screening takes place at the Grand Cafe in Paris. The film was made by Louis and Auguste Lumiere, two French brothers who developed a camera-projector called the Cinematographe. The Lumiere brothers unveiled their invention to the public in March 1895 with a brief film showing workers leaving the Lumiere factory. On December 28, the entrepreneurial siblings screened a series of short scenes from everyday French life and charged admission for the first time.

Movie technology has its roots in the early 1830s, when Joseph Plateau of Belgium and Simon Stampfer of Austria simultaneously developed a device called the phenakistoscope, which incorporated a spinning disc with slots through which a series of drawings could be viewed, creating the effect of a single moving image. The phenakistoscope, considered the precursor of modern motion pictures, was followed by decades of advances and in 1890, Thomas Edison and his assistant William Dickson developed the first motion-picture camera, called the Kinetograph. The next year, 1891, Edison invented the Kinetoscope, a machine with a peephole viewer that allowed one person to watch a strip of film as it moved past a light.

In 1894, Antoine Lumiere, the father of Auguste (1862-1954) and Louis (1864-1948), saw a demonstration of Edison’s Kinetoscope. The elder Lumiere was impressed, but reportedly told his sons, who ran a successful photographic plate factory in Lyon, France, that they could come up with something better. Louis Lumiere’s Cinematographe, which was patented in 1895, was a combination movie camera and projector that could display moving images on a screen for an audience. The Cinematographe was also smaller, lighter and used less film than Edison’s technology.

The Lumieres opened theaters (known as cinemas) in 1896 to show their work and sent crews of cameramen around the world to screen films and shoot new material. In America, the film industry quickly took off. In 1896, Vitascope Hall, believed to be the first theater in the U.S. devoted to showing movies, opened in New Orleans. In 1909, The New York Times published its first film review (of D.W. Griffith’s “Pippa Passes”), in 1911 the first Hollywood film studio opened and in 1914, Charlie Chaplin made his big-screen debut.

In addition to the Cinematographe, the Lumieres also developed the first practical color photography process, the Autochrome plate, which debuted in 1907.

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South Vietnamese win costly battle at Binh Gia


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Year
1964
Month Day
December 28

South Vietnamese troops retake Binh Gia in a costly battle. The Viet Cong launched a major offensive on December 4 and took the village of Binh Gia, 40 miles southeast of Saigon. The South Vietnamese forces recaptured the village, but only after an eight-hour battle and three battalions of reinforcements were brought in on helicopters. The operation continued into the first week of January. Losses included an estimated 200 South Vietnamese and five U.S. advisors killed, plus 300 more South Vietnamese wounded or missing. Battles such this, in which the South Vietnamese suffered such heavy losses at the hands of the Viet Cong, convinced President Lyndon B. Johnson that the South Vietnamese could not defeat the communist without the commitment of U.S. ground troops to the war.

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Woodrow Wilson born in Staunton, Virginia


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Year
1856
Month Day
December 28

Future President Woodrow Wilson is born in Staunton, Virginia on December 28, 1856. He attended private schools and graduated from Princeton University in 1879 before studying law at the University of Virginia and earning his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He was hired by Princeton as a professor of political science in 1899 and went on to serve as the institution’s president from 1902 to 1910. As Princeton’s head administrator, he revolutionized its teaching program and was largely responsible for elevating Princeton to its current prestige. Wilson’s management of Princeton also earned the attention of Democratic Party leaders, who encouraged him to run for political office. Wilson once admitted that if he hadn’t entered politics he would have been happy to live out his life teaching and playing golf, his favorite past time.

Wilson’s political career, once launched, was meteoric. It began with his election as governor of New Jersey in 1910; two years later he was elected president of the United States, a position he held until 1921.

Wilson led the nation through World War I and left a legacy of international diplomacy. The war, fought between 1914 and 1919, grimly illustrated to Wilson the critical relationship between international stability and American national security. In January 1919, at the Paris peace conference that ended the war, Wilson urged Allied leaders to draft a Covenant of League of Nations to help prevent another devastating world conflict. Having sold the plan to European leaders, Wilson had to convince Congress to ratify it. This proved a tougher challenge: Congress regarded the League as a threat to America’s sovereignty and refused to adopt the agreement. Undeterred, Wilson embarked on a tour across the United States in 1919 to ask the public’s support for the League, hoping voters would pressure Congress to adopt the plan.

The arduous tour, during which he traveled 8,000 miles in 22 days, took such a toll on Wilson that he suffered a stroke on October 2. He recovered and finished out his second term in office. Though Congress never ratified the Versailles peace treaty or the covenant, Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1920. He died on February 23, 1924.

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