It Happened Today: John Adams Complains About The Pollution In Philadelphia, the Inquirer Is Sold, and Faheem Thomas-Childs’s Killer Sentenced

In Philadelphia for the Second Continental Congress, which would adopt the Declaration of Independence just months later, Massachusetts delegate and soon-to-be second President of the United States John Adams wrote the following in a letter to his wife, Abigail, on April 28, 1776:

Instead of domestic felicity, I am destined to public contentions. Instead of rural felicity, I must reconcile myself to the smoke and noise of a city. In the place of private peace, I must be distracted with the vexation of developing the deep intrigues of politicians, and must assist in conducting the arduous operations of war, and think myself well rewarded if my private pleasure and interests are sacrificed, as they ever have been and will be, to the happiness others.

Other notable happenings: Oscar Hammerstein I sells his Philadelphia Opera House at 858 North Broad Street (April 28, 1910) where it still stands today as the Holy Ghost Headquarters Revival Center at the Met and is in need of renovations; a “murder service” that helped wives murder their husbands with poison under the direction of an Italian man named Caesare is announced by authorities (April 28, 1939); a grand jury convenes here to investigate price-rigging by electric companies (April 28, 1961); the Community College of Philadelphia is created (April 28, 1964) with a first class of 1,941 students; Kareem Johnson is sentenced to life without parole for the murder of 10-year-old Faheem Thomas-Childs (April 28, 2006), the victim that he actually cursed prior to sentencing; and the Inquirer, the Daily News and Philly.com are sold at a bankruptcy auction (Aptil 28, 2010).