Following are some of the major events to have occurred on January 28:
1939 – Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats died; he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
1986 – Seven astronauts died when the space shuttle Challenger exploded 72 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral.
1997 – At South Africa’s Truth Commission, police confessed to the 1977 murder of black civil rights leader Steve Biko.
1998 – Japan’s Finance Minister Hiroshi Mitsuzuka was forced to step down because of a bribery case.
2002 – Astrid Lindgren, popular Swedish children’s author and creator of Pippi Longstocking, died. She was 94.
2002 – A Boeing 727 belonging to Ecuadorean carrier TAME with 92 passengers and crew on board crashed into Colombia’s Cumbal volcano killing all on board.
2003 – Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s right-wing Likud party swept to victory in a general election.
2008 – Archbishop Christodoulos, the head of Greece’s powerful Orthodox Church, who mended ties with the Vatican but clashed with the Greek state, died.
2009 – President Raul Castro began the first visit to Russia by a Cuban leader since the end of the Cold War. The last time a Cuban leader visited Russia was Fidel Castro’s trip to Moscow in 1986.
2011 – Nelson Mandela arrives home from hospital.
2016 – World Health Organisation announces outbreak of Zika Virus.
(Reuters)