• January 10 - USSR expels Leon Trotsky
• February 11 - 1928 Winter Olympic Games open in St. Moritz, Switzerland
• February 25 - Charles Jenkins Laboratories of Washington, DC becomes the first holder of a television license from the Federal Radio Commission.
• March 12 - In California, the St. Francis Dam fails killing 400.
• March 21 - Charles Lindbergh is presented the Congressional Medal of Honor for his first trans-Atlantic flight.
• July 6 - The then world's largest hailstone falls in Potter, Nebraska.
• August 16 - Murderer Carl Panzram is arrested in Washington, DC after killing about 20 people.
• August 28 The Kellog-Briand treaty was signed in Paris - it was the first treaty which outlawed aggresive war.
• September 1 - Ahmet Zogu declares Albania to be a monarchy and proclaims himself king.
• October 12 - An iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Children's Hospital, Boston.
• November 4 - At Park Central Hotel in Manhattan, Arnold Rothstein, New York City's most notorious gambler, is shot to death over a poker game.
• November 6 - Swedes start a tradition of eating Gustavus Adolphus pastries to commemorate the king.
• November 6 - U.S. presidential election, 1928: Republican Herbert Hoover wins by a wide margin over Democrat Alfred E. Smith.
• November 10 - Michinomiya Hirohito is crowned the 124th Emperor of Japan

• The old Canaanite city of Ugarit is rediscovered.
• Turkey switches from arabic to the latin-based modern Turkish alphabet.
• The right to vote extended to all women in England
• Frederick Griffith conducted the Griffith experiment indirectly proving existence of DNA.
• Motorola founded.
• First (and last) Best Title Writing Academy Award given.
• The Episcopal Church ratified a new revision of the Book of Common Prayer.
• W2XBS, RCA's first television station, is established in New York City.

Year in topic

• 1928 in film
  • Sunrise
• 1928 in literature
  • Strange Fugitive by Morley Callaghan
• 1928 in music
• 1928 in sports
  • February 11 - 2nd Olympic Winter Games open in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
  • Summer Olympic Games in Amsterdam Netherlands
• 1928 in television
  • May 11 - The first regular schedule of TV programming is begun in the United States by the General Electric company. Programs are transmitted Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.
  • July 12 - First televised tennis match.
  • August 22 - Alfred E. Smith accepts the Democratic presidential nomination, with WGY simulcasting the event on radio and Television. This was the first live broadcast and the first television news event.
  • September 11 - The first broadcast of a play on television, The Queen's Messenger (W2XAD).

Births

• January 5 - Walter Mondale, U.S. Senator, Democratic presidential nominee in 1984
• January 5 - Ali Bhutto, President and Prime Minister of Pakistan († 1979)
• January 7 - William Peter Blatty, screenwriter
• January 8 - Sander Vanocur, journalist
• January 11 - David L. Wolper, producer
• January 16 - William Kennedy, author
• January 17 - Jean Barraqué, composer († 1973)
• January 17 - Vidal Sassoon, cosmetologist
• January 23 - Jeanne Moreau, actress
• January 24 - Desmond Morris, anthropologist, writer
• January 26 - Eartha Kitt, singer and actress
• January 26 - Roger Vadim, film director († 2000)
• January 30 - Hal Prince, stage producer, director
• February 5 - Andrew Greeley, priest, novelist
• February 9 - Frank Frazetta, illustrator
• February 9 - Roger Mudd, journalist
• February 11 - Conrad Janis, actor
• February 11 - Archibald Forster, CEO (Esso, United Kingdom)
• February 11 - Gerry Alexander, West Indies cricket player
• February 11 - Raoul Cita, rocker
• February 23 - Vasili Lazarev, cosmonaut († 1990)
• February 26 - Fats Domino, musician
• February 26 - Anatoli Filipchenko, cosmonaut
• February 27 - Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel
• February 27 - Alfred Hrdlicka, sculptor and graphic artist
• March 3 - France Križanič, Slovene mathematician († 2002)
• March 4 - Alan Sillitoe, writer
• March 6 - Gabriel García Márquez, writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1982
• March 10 - James Earl Ray, assassin († 1998)
• March 12 - Edward Albee, dramatist
• March 19 - Hans Küng, theologian
• March 19 - Patrick McGoohan, actor
• March 20 - Fred Rogers, children's television host († 2003)
• March 25 - Jim Lovell, astronaut
• March 28 - Zbigniew Brzezinski, United States National Security Advisor
• March 31 - Gordie Howe, ice hockey player
• March 31 - Lefty Frizzell, country music performer
• April 1 - Jane Powell, dancer, actress, singer
• April 2 - Serge Gainsbourg, singer
• April 4 - Maya Angelou, poet, novelist
• April 6 - James Watson, geneticist
• April 7 - James Garner, actor
• April 7 - Alan J. Pakula, producer, director († 1998)
• April 9 - Tom Lehrer, satirical songwriter
• May 8 - Theodore Sorenson, political operative, writer
• May 9 - Pancho Gonzalez, tennis player († 1995)
• May 11 - Mort Sahl, comedian, political commentator
• May 12 - Burt Bacharach, composer
• May 16 - Billy Martin, baseball player, coach († 1989)
• May 18 - Pernell Roberts, actor
• May 23 - Nigel Davenport, actor
• May 23 - Rosemary Clooney, singer, actress († 2002)
• May 26 - Jack Kevorkian, assisted suicide advocate
• June 1 - Georgi Dobrovolski, cosmonaut
• July 26 - Stanley Kubrick, American film director
• August 6 - Andy Warhol, American artist
• August 10 - Eddie Fisher, American singer
• August 15 - Nicolas Roeg, film director
• September 14- The Rt Hon Sir Angus Ogilvy KCVO, husband of HRH Princess Alexandra of Kent
• September 15 - Julian Cannonball Adderley, American saxophonist
• October 1 - George Peppard, actor
• November 3 - Osamu Tezuka Japanese manga artist
• November 10 - Ennio Morricone, film music composer
• December 15 - Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Austrian artist

Deaths

• January 11 - Thomas Hardy, writer
• January 29 - Douglas Haig, British soldier
• February 4- Hendrik Lorentz, Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate
• February 16 - Eddie Foy, vaudevillian, singer, dancer
• August 12 - Leos Janacek, Czech composer
• August 30 - Wilhelm Wien, physicist

Nobel Prizes

• Physics - Owen Willans Richardson
• Chemistry - Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus
• Medicine - Charles Jules Henri Nicolle
• Literature - Sigrid Undset
• Peace - Not awarded.