October 28

1703: English mathematician John Wallis, who introduced the infinity symbol (∞), died. 1886: The Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France, was dedicated in New York Harbor by U.S. President Cleveland. 1914: Dr. Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, was born. 1922: The first coast-to-coast radio broadcast of a football game was made. 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis ended after Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced that the nuclear missile installations in Cuba would be dismantled. 1965: The Gateway Arch (Gateway to the West) along the waterfront in St. Louis, MO, was completed. 1971: England became the 6th nation to launch a satellite, the Prospero. 1988: John Backus, inverter of the FORTRAN language (FORmula TRANslation), died. 2003: Marie Daly, America's first woman to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry, died. 2005: American Nobel physicist Richard Smalley, co-discoverer of a form of carbon named the buckminsterfullerene ("buckyballs"), died.