October 28 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on October 28

• Jonas Salk (1914)

  American medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines.

• Bill Gates (1955)

  American businessman and co-founder of Microsoft.

• Julia Roberts (1967)

  American actress known for Pretty Woman and her Academy Award-winning role in Erin Brockovich.

This Day in History

• 1886 — The Statue of Liberty was formally dedicated in New York Harbor, a gift from the people of France commemorating the alliance between the two nations during the American Revolution.

• 1919 — The U.S. Congress passed the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson's veto, providing the legal enforcement mechanism for nationwide Prohibition.

• 1965 — The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri was topped out, completing construction of the 630-foot stainless steel monument to westward expansion.

• 1636 — The Massachusetts Bay Colony's General Court voted to establish what became Harvard College, the first institution of higher learning founded in the American colonies.

What October 28 Says About You

Jonas Salk, born on this date in 1914, developed one of the first successful polio vaccines and then made the unusual decision not to patent it, reportedly asking a television interviewer who owned the patent, 'Could you patent the sun?' — a gesture of public-spirited restraint that stands in sharp contrast to almost everything else associated with this date's history. Bill Gates, born on this same date in 1955, took the opposite approach to intellectual property entirely, building Microsoft into one of the most valuable companies in history partly by aggressively protecting its software licensing, a genuinely different philosophy toward invention shared, coincidentally, by two people born on the same calendar day decades apart. The date's historical events lean toward grand, visible monuments: the Statue of Liberty was formally dedicated in New York Harbor on this date in 1886, a gift from France commemorating the two nations' Revolutionary War alliance, and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis was topped out on this same date in 1965, completing a 630-foot stainless steel monument to America's westward expansion nearly eight decades later. Both structures represent enormous, permanent physical commitments to an idea — liberty in one case, expansion in the other — built to last centuries rather than years. The U.S. Congress took a considerably more contentious route on this date in 1919, passing the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson's veto and providing the legal mechanism for nationwide Prohibition, a policy that would prove far less durable than either monument and was repealed within fourteen years. Julia Roberts, whose own birthday falls here too, in 1967, has spent a film career on roles that combine warmth with genuine toughness, not unlike Salk's blend of scientific rigor and public generosity. Numerology brings the 28th down to day number 1, the number of leadership and new beginnings — fitting for Salk's vaccine, which opened a genuinely new chapter in public health, and for the Statue of Liberty, dedicated as a symbolic new beginning for immigrants arriving in New York Harbor. Tourmaline is prized in some healing traditions for its supposed grounding, stabilizing qualities, a fitting association for a date whose most enduring monuments were built specifically to stand still and permanent for generations. Marigold and cosmos share no documented connection here, though the marigold's long cultivation as a hardy, dependable garden plant suits a date whose greatest legacies were built to last. That pattern of founding something meant to outlast its founders goes back further than either monument: the vote to establish what became Harvard College, cast by the Massachusetts Bay Colony's General Court on this date in 1636, created the first institution of higher learning in the American colonies nearly a century and a half before the nation it now sits within even existed, a foundation that, like the Statue of Liberty and the Gateway Arch, was built with permanence rather than immediate use in mind.