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19191776 Club

Congress overrides Wilson; the Volstead Act becomes law despite his veto

The same day Wilson rejects it, both chambers vote again and the enforcement law for Prohibition stands.

Nine months after the Eighteenth Amendment banned liquor on paper, the country still had no law to enforce it. On October 28, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson vetoed the Volstead Act, the bill written to give that ban teeth. Congress overrode him the same day, and the measure, named for Minnesota congressman Andrew Volstead and drafted by Anti-Saloon League attorney Wayne Wheeler, became law. It defined any drink over 0.5 percent alcohol as intoxicating and set the penalties Prohibition would run on…

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More from October 28
1886

Rain and fog over the harbor; Cleveland unveils Liberty before 2,000 shivering guests

A two-decade French gift reaches New York, and the torch is lit for the first time.
1965

Crews set the last piece, and the Gateway Arch finally closes at 630 feet

A nine-ton triangle of steel bridges the gap between two legs that had been rising toward each other for two years.
1962

Khrushchev agreed to pull the missiles out of Cuba

Thirteen days after U-2 photographs found the sites, the Soviet premier backs down and the world exhales.
20091776 Club
Eleven years after both men were murdered, federal protections finally cover sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability.
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Read the full October 28 edition →Everything that happened on October 28 →
More from The World Wars
1934

Roosevelt signs the Securities Exchange Act; a federal watchdog now stands over Wall Street

Kennedy, a multimillionaire who thrived in unregulated markets, is named the SEC's first chairman to police the very customs he knows best.
1942

In six minutes of dive-bombing, three Japanese carriers are ablaze; a fourth burns by afternoon

Nimitz, tipped by broken codes, springs an ambush near Midway atoll and the Kidō Butai loses four fleet carriers in a single day.
1944

160,000 troops cross the Channel; Allied forces land on five Normandy beaches under fire

Paratroopers went in past midnight, 5,000 vessels follow at dawn, and by nightfall a contested beachhead holds at a cost of at least 10,000 casualties.
1942

Dive bombers sink three Japanese carriers in six minutes; a fourth falls before dark

Cryptanalysts cracked Tokyo's naval code and fed the enemy a lie about a water shortage, and Nagumo's flight decks are crowded with fueled, armed planes when the Americans arrive.
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