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 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

December 28 - December 30 - November 29 - January 29 -- listing of all days

January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December