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On this day, Dec. 28 ...
1981: Elizabeth Jordan Carr, the first American "test-tube" baby, is born in Norfolk, Va.
Also on this day:
- 1612: Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei observes the planet Neptune, but mistakes it for a star. (Neptune wouldn't officially be discovered until 1846 by Johann Gottfried Galle.)
- 1694: Queen Mary II of England dies after more than five years of joint rule with her husband, King William III.
- 1832: John C. Calhoun becomes the first vice president of the United States to resign, stepping down because of differences with President Andrew Jackson.
- 1846: Iowa becomes the 29th state to be admitted to the Union.
- 1895: The Lumiere brothers, Auguste and Louis, hold the first public showing of their movies in Paris.
- 1908: A major earthquake followed by a tsunami devastates the Italian city of Messina, killing at least 70,000 people.
- 1945: Congress officially recognizes the Pledge of Allegiance.
- 1961: The Tennessee Williams play "Night of the Iguana" opens on Broadway.
- 1972: Kim Il Sung, the premier of North Korea, is named the country’s president under a new constitution.
- 1973: The book "Gulag Archipelago," Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s expose of the Soviet prison system, is first published in Paris.
- 1987: The bodies of 14 relatives of Ronald Gene Simmons are found at his home near Dover, Ark. after Simmons shot and killed two other people in Russellville. (Simmons, who never explained his motives, would be executed in 1990.)
- 1999: Clayton Moore --television’s "Lone Ranger" -- dies in West Hills, Calif. at age 85.
- 2008: The Detroit Lions complete an awful 0-16 season -- the NFL’s worst ever -- with a 31-21 loss to the Green Bay Packers.
- 2017: Officials in Alabama certify Democrat Doug Jones as the winner of a special U.S. Senate election over Republican Roy Moore, who charged that the election was "fraudulent."
- 2017: Apple apologized for secretly slowing down older iPhones, a move it said was necessary to avoid unexpected shutdowns due to battery fatigue.
