Today in History
29 December
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29 December |
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| 1170 Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered by four knights acting on the orders of England's King Henry II. | ||
| 1503 Battle at Carigliano: Spanish army beats France | ||
| 1539 St Jacobs Church burns after being hit by lightning | ||
| 1541 Isabella of Poland & King Ferdinand of Austria sign Treaty of Gyalu | ||
| 1558 Charles V, German emperor, buried | ||
| 1563 Francesco Maria Guaitoli composer was born | ||
| 1586 Francisco de Moncada Spanish earl of Osuna/marquis of Aytona was born | ||
| 1705 Prosper Jolyot's "Idomenée" premieres in Paris | ||
| 1708 Great Alliance occupies Gent | ||
| 1709 Elisabeth Petrovna tsarina of Russia/daughter of Peter the Great was born | ||
| 1721 Madame De Pompadour mistress of French King Louis the 15th was born | ||
| 1776 Charles Macintosh Scotland, patented waterproof fabric was born | ||
| 1778 English troops occupy Savannah, Georgia | ||
| 1782 1st nautical almanac in US published by Samuel Stearns, Boston | ||
| 1792 Archibald Alison Scottish historian (History of Europe) was born | ||
| 1800 Charles Goodyear, the American who developed the art of vulcanizing rubber, used in the production of car tires, was born. | ||
| 1808 Andrew Johnson, the 17th U.S. president, was born. | ||
| 1809 William Gladstone, four times British prime minister, was born | ||
| 1813 British burn Buffalo New York during the War of 1812 | ||
| 1837 Canadian militia destroy Caroline, a US steamboat docked at Buffalo | ||
| 1837 Steam-powered threshing machine patented, Winthrop ME | ||
| 1841 King/grand duke Willem II installs Order of Eikenkroon | ||
| 1843 Elisabeth queen of Romania/poet (Rumänische Dichtungen) was born | ||
| 1845 Texas admitted as the 28th state | ||
| 1848 Gas lights 1st installed at White House (Polk's administration) | ||
| 1851 1st Young Men's Christian Association chapter opened (Boston) | ||
| 1852 Emma Snodgrass arrested in Boston for wearing pants | ||
| 1856 Thomas J Stieltjes mathematician (Stieltjes integral) was born | ||
| 1857 Franz Liszt's "Die Hunnenschlacht" premieres in Weimar | ||
| 1859 Venustiano Carranza President of México (1915-20) was born | ||
| 1859 The first iron-hulled armored warship, Britain's HMS Warrior, was launched. | ||
| 1862 Battle of Chichasaw Bayou: confederate armies defeat General Sherman | ||
| 1862 Bowling ball invented | ||
| 1864 Fire Department celebrates 1st annual ball | ||
| 1867 1st telegraph ticker used by a brokerage house, Groesbeck & Company, New York | ||
| 1874 Alfonso XII was proclaimed king of Spain. | ||
| 1876 11 passenger cars crash in a ravine near Ashtabula OH, 92 die | ||
| 1876 Frédéric A Bartholdi (Statue of Liberty sculptor) weds Jeanne-Emilie | ||
| 1876 Pablo Casals, Spanish cellist and conductor, was born. | ||
| 1879 Billy Mitchell aviation hero general (WWI) was born | ||
| 1885 Gottlieb Daimler patents 1st bike (Germany) | ||
| 1888 Joseph Beran Czechoslovakian archbishop of Prague/cardinal was born | ||
| 1890 More than 200 Sioux men, women and children were massacred by U.S. troops at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. | ||
| 1890 Jozef Cantré Flemish sculptor/wood carver was born | ||
| 1891 Edison patents "transmission of signals electrically" (radio) | ||
| 1895 Dr L S Jameson begins failed raid on Johannesburg | ||
| 1895 The Jameson Raid into the Transvaal to aid the Uitlanders (mainly British settlers) in the Boer republic, began. | ||
| 1896 David Alfaro Siqueiros México, painter/muralist (Liberation of Chile) was born | ||
| 1899 English fleet brings German postschip Bundesrath up | ||
| 1900 General Viljoen surprise attack British garrison to Helvetia | ||
| 1903 French Equatorial Africa separates into Gabon, Chad & Ubangi-Shari | ||
| 1908 Patent granted for a 4-wheel automobile brake, Clintonville WI | ||
| 1911 San Francisco Symphony is formed | ||
| 1911 Proclamation restores "Dei Gratia" from Canada's coins | ||
| 1911 Sun Yat Sen became the first president of the Chinese Republic. | ||
| 1911 Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs, German physicist who settled in Britain and spied for the Soviet Union, was born. | ||
| 1913 1st movie serial, "Adventures of Kathlyn" premieres in Chicago IL | ||
| 1920 The netherlands/Venezuela recover diplomatic relations | ||
| 1920 Yugoslav government bans communist party | ||
| 1921 William Lyon Mackenzie King succeeded Arthur Meighen as Canadian PM | ||
| 1922 Revised Netherlands Law proclaims suffrage | ||
| 1926 Vatican puts French fascist Charles Maurras' work on the index | ||
| 1929 Police arrest Sukarno & 100s PNI-leaders | ||
| 1931 Identification of heavy water publicly announced, HC Urey | ||
| 1934 Japan renounces Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 & London Treaty of 1930 | ||
| 1934 Federico García Lorca's "Yerma" premieres in Madrid | ||
| 1937 Pan Am starts San Francisco CA-to-Auckland, New Zealand service | ||
| 1937 Ireland adopts constitution (Irish Free State becomes Eire) | ||
| 1938 Construction on Lake Washington Floating Bridge, Seattle WA, begins | ||
| 1940 German aircraft dropped thousands of incendiary bombs on London, destroying some cherished buildings. | ||
| 1944 Belgian Nazi Léon Degrelle at default to the death sentenced | ||
| 1944 General Eisenhowers train returns to Versailles | ||
| 1944 Soviet tanks entered Budapest in World War II. | ||
| 1947 Ship carrying Jewish immigrants driven away from Palestine | ||
| 1948 US State Department announces work on placing objects into Earth orbit | ||
| 1948 "Rape of Lucretia" opens at Ziegfeld Theater NYC for 23 performances | ||
| 1948 Canada recognizes Israel | ||
| 1949 Hungary nationalized its industries | ||
| 1952 1st transistorized hearing aid offered for sale (Elmsford NY) | ||
| 1952 The first transistor hearing aid was marketed in the United States. | ||
| 1954 Kingdom of the Netherlands, with Netherlands & Netherlands Antilles as autonomous parts, comes into being | ||
| 1955 Barbra Streisand's 1st recording, "You'll Never Know" at age 13 | ||
| 1957 Singers Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gormé wed in Las Vegas | ||
| 1965 President Ho Chi Minh of North Vietnam rejected unconditional peace talks offered by U.S. | ||
| 1966 Pirate Radio Phoenix, 1st transmission (Worcester MA) | ||
| 1967 Turkish-Cypriot government forms in Cyprus | ||
| 1968 Israeli commandos destroy 13 Lebanese airplanes | ||
| 1972 99 people were killed when an Eastern Airlines Lockheed L-1011 crashed into the Everglades near Miami International Airport in Florida. | ||
| 1972 Life magazine ceases publication | ||
| 1975 11 killed, 75 hurt by terrorist bomb at LaGuardia Airport in New York NY | ||
| 1978 Shah of Iran, asks Shapour Bahktiar to form a civilian government | ||
| 1978 Spain constitution goes into effect | ||
| 1980 Shuttle STS-1 moves from Vandenberg AFB to Launch Complex 39A | ||
| 1981 U.S. President Reagan announced a program of economic sanctions against the Soviet Union because of its alleged role in the imposition of martial law in Poland. | ||
| 1982 Bob Marley postage stamp issued in Jamaica | ||
| 1983 The United States formally announced its intention to withdraw from UNESCO at the end of 1984. | ||
| 1984 Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi claims victory in parliamentary elections | ||
| 1986 Former British prime minister (1957-63) Harold Macmillan died. | ||
| 1988 Soviet Red Army Team edges New York Islanders, 3-2 at Nassau Coliseum | ||
| 1988 Victorian Post Office Museum in Australia closes | ||
| 1989 Playwright Vaclav Havel, jailed for five years for his human rights activities and long denounced in the communist media as an enemy of the state, was sworn in as president of Czechoslovakia. | ||
| 1989 Wayne Gretzky & Martina Navratilova are named athletes of the decade by the Associated Press | ||
| 1991 Boeing 747-200F of China Airlines crash into mountain at Taipei | ||
| 1992 Governor Cuomo grants Jean Harris ("Scarsdale Diet" Murderess) clemency | ||
| 1992 President Daniel arap Moi won Kenya's first multiparty polls in 26 years. In 1993, after 2,000 years of often hostile Christian-Jewish relations, the Vatican and Israel approved a document in which the Holy See and the Jewish state recognized each other. | ||
| 1993 Courtney Love sues doctors for leaking news of her methadone treatment | ||
| 1993 Todd Bridges arrested for transporting methamphetamine (speed) | ||
| 1994 53 people were killed when a Turkish Airlines aircraft crashed in a snowstorm while trying to land in eastern Turkey. | ||
| 1994 Bangladesh government of Zia resigns | ||
| 1994 Billionaire J Paul Getty Jr marries Victoria Holdsworth on Barbados | ||
| 1994 Last Dutch electro-magnetic telephone exchange shuts down | ||
| 1995 A French air force cargo plane landed at the Bosnian city of Mostar, becoming the first aircraft to do so since 1992. | ||
| 1997 Hong Kong begins slaughtering all its chickens to prevent bird flu | ||
| 1997 Orville Lynn Majors, 36, arrested for many deaths under his care | ||
| 1997 Russia signs agreement to build a $3B nuclear power plant in China | ||