December 29


December 29 is the 363nd day of the year (364rd in leap years) in the
Gregorian Calendar, with 2 days remaining.

Events

   * 1170 - St Thomas Becket, is slain in his own cathedral on orders from
     Henry II of England.
   * 1813 - War of 1812: British soldiers burn Buffalo, New York
   * 1845 - Texas is admitted as the 28th U.S. state.
   * 1851 - The first American-based YMCA opens, in Boston, Massachusetts
   * 1860 - The first British seagoing iron-clad warship, the HMS Warrior is
     launched.
   * 1890 - The United States Seventh Cavalry massacres over 400 men, women
     and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
   * 1891 - Thomas Edison patents the radio
   * 1911 - Sun Yat-sen becomes the first President of the Republic of China
   * 1913 - The first serial motion picture, The Unwelcome Throne is
     released by Seligs Polyscope Company.
   * 1921 - William Lyon Mackenzie King becomes Prime Minister of Canada
   * 1934 - The first college basketball game is played, between Notre Dame
     University and New York University at Madison Square Garden in New York
     City
   * 1934 - Japan renounces the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the
     London Naval Treaty of 1930.
   * 1940 - Battle of Britain: Luftwaffe firebombs London, killing almost
     3000 civilians
   * 1949 - KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut becomes the first Ultra high
     frequency (UHF) television station to operate a daily schedule.
   * 1975 - A bomb explods at New York City's LaGuardia Airport killing 11.
   * 1989 - Vaclav Havel becomes President of Czechoslovakia
   * 1989 - Riots break-out after Hong Kong decides to forcibly repatriate
     Vietnamese refugees.
   * 1996 - Guatemala and leaders of Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union
     sign a peace accord that ends a 36 year a civil war.
   * 1997 - Hong Kong begins to kill all the nation's chickens (1.25
     million) to stop the spread of a potentially deadly influenza strain.
   * 1998 - Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the genocide in
     Cambodia that claimed over 1 million in the 1970s.

Births

   * 1800 - Charles Goodyear, invented the vulcanization of rubber (+ 1860)
   * 1808 - Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States (+ 1875)
   * 1809 - William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (+
     1897)
   * 1840 - Anton Dohrn, zoologist (+ 1909)
   * 1876 - Pablo Casals, cellist and conductor (+ 1973)
   * 1879 - Billy Mitchell, United States Army officer, United States Air
     Force pioneer (+ 1936)
   * 1881 - Jess Willard, boxing champion (+ 1968)
   * 1890 - KŠthe Dorsch, actress (+ 1957)
   * 1908 - Helmut Gollwitzer, theologian (+ 1993)
   * 1917 - Tom Bradley, mayor of Los Angeles, California (+ 1998)
   * 1936 - Mary Tyler Moore, actress
   * 1936 - Ray Nitschke, American football star (+ 1998)
   * 1937 - Barbara Steele, actress
   * 1938 - Jon Voight, actor
   * 1942 - Rick Danko, musician ("The Band") (+ 1999)
   * 1946 - Marianne Faithfull, singer
   * 1947 - Ted Danson, actor
   * 1952 - Gelsey Kirkland, dancer
   * 1972 - Jude Law, actor

Deaths

   * 1170 - St. Thomas a Becket, English bishop, assassinated
   * 1916 - Grigori Rasputin, Russian monk
   * 1926 - Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet
   * 1967 - Paul Whiteman, jazz musician, conductor
   * 1986 - Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
   * 1999 - Jerzy Waldorff, Polish film and music critic