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🌟 Editor's Note
Good morning! It’s Wednesday, October 28. Today, we're exploring the first use of fingerprints by police, Cuba's discovery, the Statue of Liberty, the creation of the Gateway Arch, Matthew Perry's tragic end, the DMCA, and much more — precise, bright, and quick!
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🚀 Time Machine
-1492
Christopher Columbus sights Cuba and claims it for Spain, naming it "Juana".
-1538
The first university in the Americas, Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino, was founded in Santo Domingo.
-1746
Lima and Callao were destroyed by an earthquake, killing 18,000.
-1831
Michael Faraday demonstrated his dynamo, an electric generator.
-1886
President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty, and New York City celebrated with the first ticker-tape parade.
-1904
St. Louis Police try out a new investigative technique: fingerprints.
-1919
Congress passed the Volstead Act, banning alcohol nationwide, despite President Woodrow Wilson's veto.
-1924
Miner M. de Bruin discovers the "Taung Child" fossil skull in a lime quarry in Taung, South Africa. Psychologist Raymond Dart identifies it as Australopithecus africanus.
-1940
Mussolini’s army, already in Albania, invades Greece, resulting in a disastrous campaign.
-1965
Missouri's Gateway Arch, a stunning 630-foot stainless-steel structure, was completed, marking the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.
-1998
President Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) into law, strengthening federal copyright protections against threats on the Internet and emerging technologies.
-2023
Matthew Perry, 54, best known as Chandler Bing on “Friends,” was found dead in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home.
✨ PRESENTED BY MONEY
Introducing Fair Game from Vanity Fair
Join Mark Guiducci for a series of wide-ranging conversations with cultural leaders from the worlds of Hollywood, Politics, Style, Silicon Valley, and beyond.
On every episode, Vanity Fair pulls back the curtain on how some of the most interesting and powerful minds in our society work – and where they see us going. On Fair Game from Vanity Fair, no subject is off limits.
📸 Snapshot
Beginning of the vacuum cleaner. A movable gadget, wheeled into the house for cleaning, 1900
🗨️ Last Words
“It's very beautiful over there.”
