The following events occurred in July 1928:
Sunday, July 1, 1928
Álvaro Obregón was elected unopposed to succeed Plutarco Elías Calles as President of Mexico beginning December 1. The NBC-owned experimental television station W2XBS began operations in New York City with test broadcasts of the signals scanned by the RCA Photophone television scanning system. It would begin commercial broadcasts exactly 13 years later, on July 1, 1941, and is now the NBC flagship station WNBC. New York police ended a dance marathon after 20 days. The $8,600 prize money was distributed among the nine remaining couples. Died: Frankie Yale, 35, American gangster, was killed by submachine gun fire and a shotgun blast while driving in New York City.
Monday, July 2, 1928
Prominent temperance activist Ernest Cherrington declared Al Smith the "most influential and powerful enemy of Prohibition that has ever appeared in public life" and urged all prohibitionists to unite against the Democratic presidential nominee. The Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 became law in the United Kingdom. Born: Iven Carl Kincheloe Jr., U.S. Air Force test pilot, aeronautical engineer and Korean War flying ace; in Detroit (d. 1958)
Tuesday, July 3, 1928
English inventor John Logie Baird successfully demonstrate the transmission of colour television for the first time. The demonstration transmitted pictures of eight-year-old Noele Gordon, "wearing different coloured hats". A prototype of the first commercially available television set, the General Electric "Octagon" scanning disk mechanical television, was unveiled by General Electric for possible manufacture and sale. Only four of the sets, which included a wooden cabinet in the style of furniture similar to radio receivers, were made and the Octagon was never marketed. The initial suggested retail price for the set was $75.00, equivalent to almost $1,200 in 2020.
Wednesday, July 4, 1928
Eleftherios Venizelos became Prime Minister of Greece for the fifth time. Alfred Loewenstein, a Belgian financier and one of the wealthiest people in the world at the time with a fortune of 12 million pounds sterling (equivalent to $60 million in U.S. and to $950,000,000 in 2021), was killed after falling out of his privately owned airplane at an altitude of . At the time, he and six other people were in a Fokker F.VII airliner flying over the English Channel from Croydon to Brussels. Loewenstein had last been seen walking to the rear of the aircraft to use the bathroom and had opened a door opposite the bathroom. His body was found on a beach in France eight days later. Daredevil Jean Lussier survived the stunt of being swept over Niagara Falls, using a specially constructed rubber ball in diameter. Although the rubber ball was heavily damaged, Lussier sustained only minor bruises after plunging . Previous attempts at going over the Falls had been in wooden barrels; Lussier became only the fourth person to survive the stunt. Born: Teofisto Guingona Jr., Filipino politician; in San Juan, Rizal Chuck Tanner, baseball player and manager, in New Castle, Pennsylvania (d. 2011)
Thursday, July 5, 1928
Italian aviators Arturo Ferrarin and Carlo Del Prete set a new distance record for sustained flight when they landed north of Natal, Brazil, away from Montecelio, Italy where they took off from two days earlier. Born: Warren Oates, American film actor, in Depoy, Kentucky (d. 1982)
Friday, July 6, 1928
The sinking of the Chilean Navy transport Angamos killed 262 of the 269 people on board when the vessel capsized in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the port of Lebu. Only seven people were rescued. Angamos, Chilean Navy website (in Spanish) Lights of New York, the first all-talking full-length film, premiered at the Strand Theatre in New York City. René Lacoste defeated Henri Cochet in the Gentleman's Singles Final of the Wimbledon tennis championships. The experimental television station W3XK began airing programming broadcast from the laboratory of Charles Francis Jenkins. Broadcasting began at 8:00 p.m. every night except Sunday, and initially consisted of short films lasting a few minutes each. The images were scanned at a resolution of 48 lines. A Swedish aviator landed at the site of the stranded Italia crew and rescued Einar Lundborg. Born: Nestor de Villa, Filipino actor, in Cabanatuan (d. 2004)