What happened on 28 January?

21 events from the Ever-When timeline, ranked by how much they mattered.

1. 98 Reign of Trajan Optimus Princeps; expands the empire to its greatest territorial extent with conquest of Dacia and Mesopotamia.
2. 1813 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen's most-loved novel; comedy of manners about the Bennet sisters and Mr Darcy; never out of print since 1813.
3. 1521 Diet of Worms Imperial Diet at Worms summons Luther; he refuses to recant (traditionally 'Here I stand'); Emperor Charles V bans his works.
4. 1547 Death of Henry VIII Henry's son Edward VI accelerates the move toward Protestantism.
5. 1887 Eiffel Tower built Iron lattice tower for the 1889 Paris Exposition; world's tallest structure for 41 years.
6. 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster Shuttle breaks apart 73 seconds after launch; all 7 crew die.
7. 1547 Reign of Edward VI Reign of Edward VI (1547-1553) as King of England.
8. 1770 Lord North's premiership George III's favourite minister governs for twelve years and loses the American colonies.
9. 1865 Born: Lala Lajpat Rai Indian independence activist; 'Lion of Punjab'.
10. 1912 Born: Jackson Pollock American Abstract Expressionist of drip-painted canvases.
11. 1955 Born: Nicolas Sarkozy Centre-right president of France 2007-2012.
12. 1573 Warsaw Confederation The Commonwealth's nobles guarantee religious freedom by statute while France burns Huguenots — one of Europe's first acts of broad constitutional toleration.
13. 1919 Weber's 'Politics as a Vocation' In a Munich lecture amid the German revolution, Weber defines the state as holding a 'monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force'.
14. 1936 Pravda's 'Muddle Instead of Music' Two days after Stalin walks out of Lady Macbeth, an unsigned Pravda editorial damns it as 'muddle instead of music' — and warns it could 'end very badly'. Shostakovich withdraws hi
15. 1916 Manitoba women win the vote After Nellie McClung's mock parliament made the premier a laughing stock, Manitoba becomes the first Canadian province to enfranchise women.
16. 1833 Born: Charles George Gordon 'Chinese Gordon' of the Ever Victorious Army, evangelical soldier-administrator and slave-trade suppressor in Sudan, killed at the fall of Khartoum — the Victorian empire's supreme
17. 1958 The Lego brick patented A Billund carpenter's firm patents the stud-and-tube brick; every Lego element moulded since still clicks onto it.
18. 1457 Margaret Beaufort gives birth to Henry Tudor Thirteen years old and widowed two months earlier, Margaret Beaufort nearly dies giving birth at Pembroke Castle to the son she will spend thirty years steering towards the throne.
19. 2017 Serena wins her 23rd Grand Slam while pregnant Eight weeks pregnant, Serena beats her sister Venus in the Australian Open final for a then Open-era record 23rd major singles title.
20. 1853 Charlotte Brontë's Villette Lucy Snowe teaches in a Belgian girls' school and loves in silence — Charlotte Brontë's last and most psychologically daring novel, drawn from her own years in Brussels.
21. 1596 Death of Francis Drake On a failed last raid on the Spanish Main, Drake dies of dysentery off Portobelo and is buried at sea in a lead coffin.