A look back at events in history on August 28 with Mike Badham.
1790: Convict Kenwick Williams hosted a party in Newgate Jail to celebrate his reprieve from the scaffold. Sentenced to two years for stabbing a girl in the street and to hang for cutting her dress (no, really) an appeal court decided the dress damage was accidental and quashed the death penalty.
1850: Wagner's opera Lohengrin had its premiere. Wagner's patron, King Ludwig of Bavaria was fond of having his photo taken as Lohengrin, standing in a swan-shaped barge.
1859: World's first oil strike started gushing in Titusville, Pennsylvania.
1872: World's first Wild West show opened. Not by Buffalo Bill, but by small-time showman Sid Barnett. He died broke.
1891: Sally, the arithmetic chimp, died in London Zoo. She could count up to 20.
1922: World's first radio commercial was broadcast in New York - for a new block of flats.
1927: US millionaire Charles Levine quarreled with the pilot who had flown him across the Atlantic. Next day, although he had never piloted a plane before, he took off from Paris and flew to London. He landed safely at Croydon airport on his fifth attempt.
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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