May 28th: Turing’s Blueprint & Birthdays That Changed the World

On May 28th, 1936, a paper was submitted that contained no new data, no physical discovery, and yet it invented the twenty-first century. Just yesterday we talked about the delightful tapestry of history, and today we find a thread that literally programmed our modern world. It was Alan Turing’s paper, “On Computable Numbers,” and it laid out the theoretical blueprint for every computer, every smartphone, every algorithm that shapes our lives. It’s a perfect example of how a single day can hold a quiet moment that ends up shouting across the decades. And May 28th is a day full of moments like that—some triumphant, some tragic, all of them absolutely vital.

Let’s start with the triumphant. Because one year and one day after Turing submitted his paper, on May 28th, 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge opened to cars. After opening to pedestrians the day before, this was the moment San Francisco’s impossible dream became a real, roaring, steel-and-asphalt artery. It was, and still is, a breathtaking statement about what we can build when we decide to connect things. But history is never just one story. And this is the gut punch of May 28th. Because on this same day in 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law.

This wasn't a bill about infrastructure or progress. It was an act that authorized the forced relocation of tens of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral lands in the southeast. It set the stage for the Trail of Tears. It’s a staggering, heartbreaking piece of American history, and it shares a calendar day with one of our most celebrated symbols of connection. The day holds uplift, too. On May 28th, 1952, women in Greece won the right to vote and to stand for office. This was a monumental shift, and it wasn't just theoretical. The very next January, a woman named Eleni Skoura walked into the Hellenic Parliament as its first-ever female member.

You can just feel the tectonic plates of society shifting right there. A door that was sealed shut for millennia had just been kicked wide open. And then there are the people born on this day, who feel like they were destined for the history books. We have Ian Fleming, born in 1908, the man who would give us James Bond—a character who has defined and redefined our ideas of espionage and cool for over half a century. We have the incredible Jim Thorpe, born in 1888, the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the United States, a story of athletic genius and profound resilience.

And just for good measure, pop royalty Kylie Minogue, born in 1968. Even our cultural history gets a jolt. On May 28th, 1991, a band from Chicago called the Smashing Pumpkins released their debut album, “Gish.” Co-produced by a young Butch Vig, who would soon produce Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” it became the best-selling independent album of its time. It was the sound of the alternative nation just starting to tune its guitars, a fuzzy, dreamy, heavy pre-shock to the earthquake that was about to hit the music world. So we have this incredible, dizzying collection of events.

A bridge, a tragic law, a revolution in suffrage, the birth of a super-spy’s creator, and the dawn of grunge. But I want to go back. I want to stand on that day, May 28th, and look at two events in particular. The Golden Gate Bridge opening in 1937, and the signing of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Because holding these two moments together tells us something absolutely fundamental about who we are. Let’s start with the bridge. It’s almost impossible to overstate what a marvel it was. People said it couldn't be done. The winds were too strong, the water was too deep, the fog was too thick.

They called the strait “the gate to hell.” And then, a team led by Joseph Strauss just… did it. They built a one-point-seven-mile-long suspension bridge in a color, International Orange, chosen specifically to stand out against the sea and the sky. When it opened to traffic on May 28th, 1937, it wasn’t just a convenience. It was a declaration. It was a symbol of American optimism and ingenuity in the middle of the Great Depression. It said, “Look what we can do. Look how we can span the impossible gap.” It was a project for the public, for everyone. A piece of infrastructure that was also a work of art, designed to bring people together.

It physically and symbolically connected a city to the wider world. It was an act of profound, audacious connection. Now, let’s rewind one hundred and seven years. May 28th, 1830. The mood is not one of optimistic construction. It’s one of grim, legalistic severance. President Andrew Jackson, a man whose entire political identity was built on a rugged, often brutal, frontier expansionism, picks up a pen. He signs the Indian Removal Act. The language of the law, as it often is, was deceptively neutral. It “enabled the federal government to negotiate with southeastern Native American tribes for their ancestral lands.” Negotiate.

But there was no real negotiation. It was an ultimatum. The Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Cherokee, the Creek, and the Seminole nations were told to give up the land they had lived on for generations—in Georgia, in Florida, in Tennessee—and move west of the Mississippi River to a designated “Indian Territory.” This act didn't build a bridge. It created a chasm. It legally codified the idea that some people belonged and others could be forcibly removed to make way for them. The decade that followed saw the forced marches, the disease, the starvation, the thousands of deaths that became known as the Trail of Tears.

It was an act of profound, state-sanctioned disconnection. It severed people from their homes, their history, and their ancestors. So here we have it. The same date on the calendar. One moment represents the pinnacle of connection—using steel and concrete and sheer human will to bring people closer. The other represents the depths of disconnection—using law and military force to tear people apart. Looking back now, we see both of these impulses churning away in the American story, often at the same time. The impulse to build, to unite, to create magnificent public works that serve everyone.

And the impulse to define who “everyone” is, often by excluding, displacing, and harming others. It’s not that one happened, and then we learned our lesson and the other happened. They are parallel tracks of our history. The Golden Gate Bridge stands as a monument to what we can achieve when we focus on connection. The Indian Removal Act stands as a monument to the devastation we can cause when we focus on exclusion. And May 28th holds them both. It reminds us that progress is never a simple, clean story. It’s a messy, contradictory, and often painful process. What does this retrospective teach us?

It teaches us to be wary of simple narratives. When we celebrate the bridge, we must also remember the act. Not to diminish the achievement of the bridge, but to understand the full, complicated picture of the nation that built it. The spirit that built the Golden Gate is alive today every time we embark on an ambitious public project, from space exploration to medical research. And the spirit that enacted the Indian Removal Act is alive today in every debate we have about borders, belonging, and whose rights matter. The tension between connection and severance isn't a historical artifact.

It’s the central tension of our present moment. History isn’t a straight line of progress. It's the chaotic, simultaneous building of bridges and the drawing of cruel new borders, all happening on the very same day.