Explore 28 April

Dennis Tito, the first private citizen to visit the International Space Station, speaking at the Space Congress at Cape Canaveral in 2003 (NASA).

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NASA · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

The first paying tourist flies into space

On 28 April 2001 the American businessman Dennis Tito lifted off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan aboard the Russian spacecraft Soyuz TM-32. He had paid a reported 20 million US dollars for the trip and trained for months at Star City outside Moscow.

Tito spent six days on the International Space Station before returning to Earth on an older Soyuz. NASA had at first opposed the visit, but his flight opened the way for the private space travel of later years.

Igor Stravinsky, who wrote the music for Orpheus, photographed at the piano by Arnold Newman.

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Arnold Newman · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Balanchine’s Orpheus is first danced in New York

On 28 April 1948 the ballet Orpheus was first performed by Ballet Society at the City Center of Music and Drama in New York. George Balanchine made the choreography to a new score by Igor Stravinsky, with sets and costumes by the sculptor Isamu Noguchi.

The ballet retold the Greek story of the musician who tries to lead his wife Eurydice back from the dead. Its success led City Center to invite the company to become its resident troupe, and later that year it began performing as New York City Ballet.

Workers discuss personal safety on a building site (US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health).

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US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

World Day for Safety and Health at Work

The International Labour Organization marks 28 April as a day to promote the prevention of accidents and illness at work, and has done so since 2003. The date had already been kept since the 1990s by trade unions as Workers’ Memorial Day, remembering people killed or injured at work.

The Basilica of Saint Pierre Chanel at Poi, on Futuna, near where he was killed.

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Vogensto · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized and cropped for display.

Feast of St Peter Chanel

Catholics remember Peter Chanel, a French missionary priest of the Society of Mary, on 28 April, the day he was killed on the island of Futuna in the South Pacific in 1841. He is honoured as the first martyr of Oceania and was declared a saint in 1954.