December 28

1520: Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reached the Pacific Ocean after passing through the South American strait that now bears his name. 1869: William Semple of Mt. Vernon, Ohio, patented chewing gum. 1882: English astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington was born. 1895: The world's first movie theater opened in Paris, France. 1923: French architect Gustave Eiffel, of tower fame, died. 1929: Dutch astronomer Maarten Schmidt, who discovered the distance vs. spectral shift paradox of quasars, was born. 1964: The U.S. launched the space probe Mariner 4 on a course to Mars. 1976: Patent #4,000,000 was issued in to Robert Mendenhall for a process for recycling asphalt compositions. 2000: U.S. retail giant Montgomery Ward announced it is going out of business after 128 years. 2005: The first in a series of test-bed Galileo navigation satellites was launched by the European Union.