December 29
Appearance
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 ultrahigh 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 - Käthe 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
Holidays and observances
See Also:
December 28 - December 30 - November 29 - January 29 -- listing of all days
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December