ON THIS DAY SEPTEMBER 28 2023

This Day in History: September 28

Featured Event

1542







California “discovered”




Explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, known as the “discoverer” of California, landed this day in 1542 near what is now San Diego and became the first European to set foot on the west coast of what would become the United States.


Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, Portuguese João Rodrigues Cabrilho, (died January 3, 1543?, off the coast of northern California), soldier and explorer in the service of Spain, chiefly known as the discoverer of California. Virtually nothing definitive is known of Cabrillo’s early life. Although more than one village in Portugal has claimed to be his birthplace, scholars have long debated whether he was of Spanish or Portuguese origin. As a young man, he appears to have accompanied the Spanish soldier Pánfilo de Narváez (1520) in his unsuccessful punitive expedition against Hernán Cortés, conqueror of the Aztecs of Mexico. He was evidently one ...(100 of 170 words)


see all related content

Featured Biography

Brigitte Bardot
French actress







Brigitte Bardot, (born September 28, 1934, Paris, France), French film actress who became an international sex symbol in the 1950s and ’60s.
Bardot was born to wealthy bourgeois parents, and at the age of 15 she posed for the cover of Elle (May 8, 1950), France’s leading women’s magazine. Roger Vadim, an aspiring director, was impressed and shrewdly fashioned her public and screen image as an erotic child of nature—blond, sensuous, and amoral. In two motion pictures directed by Vadim—Et Dieu créa la femme (1956; And God Created Woman) and Les Bijoutiers du claire de lune (1958; “The Jewelers of Moonlight”; Eng. title The Night Heaven Fell)—Bardot broke contemporary film taboos against nudity and set box office records in Europe and the United States. (Bardot was married to Vadim from 1952 to 1957.)


see all related content