By: Madisen Child Welcome back to the sixth installment of “This Day In History,” where we feature a prominent event, birth, and death from one day spanning all of human history. Today, we are focused on April 28.
Event: Billy the Kid was an infamous criminal in the “Wild West” era of American history. He was born William Henry McCarty in 1859, though his exact date of birth is disputed. McCarty was orphaned at age 15 after his mother died of tuberculosis and his father abandoned him. His crimes started only a year later when he was caught stealing laundry from Sarah Brown, who had let him stay with her in exchange for work. From then on, his crimes only escalated. He quickly gained a reputation as an outlaw, including an alleged 21 murders. It was today, in 1881, that McCarty escaped from Lincoln County Jail in London, New Mexico. He had been incarcerated for the murder of a sheriff during the Lincoln County War. Unfortunately for the young desperado, Sheriff Pat Garrett would catch up with him at Fort Sumner on July 14 that same year and he’d be shot to death. Death: Italy often gets overlooked for their role as an Axis Power in World War II. The Nazis of Germany and America’s personal grudge with Japan after Pearl Harbor left little room for them in the eyes of history, it seems. However, Italy was suffering with its own problems during the war. Benito Mussolini was the Fascist dictator of Italy that worked alongside Adolf Hitler and Hideki Tojo. After Allied troops invaded Italy in April 1945, Mussolini and his mistress escaped to Switzerland with the intention to go to Spain. Two days after their escape, they were stopped, identified, and arrested. The next day, April 28, they were shot to death with fifteen other members of the Italian Social Republic. Their bodies were kicked, spit on, hung upside down from an Esso gas station roof, and stoned by civilians. Birth: Terry Pratchett was an English humorist, satirist, and author who wrote over 41 novels. One well-known novel is his collaboration with Neil Gaiman, “Good Omens: the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch,” known mostly as just “Good Omens.” The story is a comedy about the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley attempting to sabotage the apocalypse, as well as a “Switched at Birth” esque subplot involving the Antichrist and a normal human child. The book has since been turned into a TV series, released in 2019. Pratchett was born as Sir Terrence David John Pratchett on April 28, 1948. He was born to David and Eileen Pratchett in Beaconsfield, England as their only child. Pratchett would grow up to be an extremely gifted individual. His story “The Hades Business” would become his first commercially published story when he was only 15.
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