On December 29th...

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1170 Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury, was assassinated.

1689 Physician Thomas Sydenham died.

1709 Elizabeth, Tsarina of Russia, was born.

1778 British troops occupied Savannah, Georgia.

1782 The first nautical almanac in the United States was published in Boston, Massachusetts, by Samuel Stearns.

1786 The Assembly of Notables was convoked in France.

1800 Charles Goodyear, inventor of the process for vulcanizing rubber, was born.

1808 Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States, was born.

1809 William Gladstone, four-time Prime Minister of Great Britain, was born.

1812 The USS Constitution (aka "Old Ironsides") defeated the British ship HMS Java.

1813 The British burned Buffalo, New York.
1813 Alexander Parkes, inventor of the first man-made plastic, was born.

1833 U. S. Senator John James Ingalls was born.

1834 Economist Thomas Malthus died.

1835 The Treaty of New Echota was signed, ceding all the lands of the Cherokee east of the Mississippi River to the United States.

1837 A steam-powered threshing machine was patented in Winthrop, Maine.

1845 Texas was admitted as the 28th state.

1848 Gas lights were installed in the White House.

1851 The first American Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) chapter opened in Boston Massachusetts.

1852 Emma Snodgrass was arrested in Boston, Massachusetts, for wearing pants.

1860 The first British seagoing iron-clad warship, HMS Warrior, was launched.

1862 The bowling ball was invented.

1867 Groesbeck & Co. of New York, New York, became the first brokerage house to use a telegraph ticker.

1871 Eleven passenger cars of a train crashed into a ravine near Ashtabula, Ohio, killing 92 persons.

1876 Cellist Pablo Casals was born.

1879 Aviator Billy Mitchell was born.

1890 Approximately 300 Sioux warriors, women, and children were killed by army soldiers at Wounded Knee Creek.

1891 Thomas Edison patented the "transmission of signals electrically" (radio).

1894 U. S. Senator Lister Hill was born.

1903 French Equatorial Africa was separated into Gabon, Chad, and Ubangi-Shari.

1908 A patent was granted for a 4-wheel automobile brake.

1911 Sun Yat-sen became the first President of the Republic of China.
1911 Mongolia gained independence from the Qing dynasty.
1911 The San Francisco (California) Symphony was formed.

1913 The first movie serial, Adventures of Kathlyn, premiered in Chicago, Illinois.

1920 The government of Yugoslavia banned the Communist Party.

1921 Mackenzie King was sworn in as the 10th Prime Minister of Canada.

1930 Fred P. Newton completed an 1,826-mile swim down the Mississippi River from Ford Dam, Minnesota, to New Orleans, Louisiana.

1931 The identification of heavy water was publicly announced.

1932 Actress Inga Swenson was born.

1936 Actress Mary Tyler Moore was born.

1937 The Irish Free State was renamed Eire (Ireland).
1937 Lou Thesz beat Everett Marshall to become the youngest person ever to win the National Wrestling Association World Heavyweight title.

1938 Construction of the Lake Washington Floating Bridge (Seattle, Washington) began.
1938 Actor Jon Voight was born.

1940 Germany began dropping incendiary bombs on London.

1946 Singer Marianne Faithfull was born.

1947 Actor Ted Danson was born.

1949 Hungary nationalized its industries.
1949 The first UHF television station began operating on a regular basis, at Bridgeport, Connecticut.

1951 Singer Yvonne Elliman was born.

1952 The first transistorized hearing aid was offered for sale, in Elmsford New York.

1957 Singers Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé were married in Las Vegas, Nevada.

1959 Comedian Paula Poundstone was born.

1962 Graham Hill won the Formula One Driver's Championship.

1965 The film Thunderball premiered in Tokyo, Japan.
1965 CBS purchased NFL television rights for 1966-1968 for $18.8 million a year.

1966 R. S. Hagan piloted the frst flight of a Beech Model 60 Duke.

1967 A Turkish-Cypriot government was formed in Cyprus.

1970 U. S. President Richard Nixon signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

1971 U. S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan died.

1972 An Eastern Airlines passenger jet crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing 101 persons.
1972 The last issue of Life magazine was published.
1972 Actor Jude Law was born.

1975 A terrorist bomb exploded at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, New York, killing 11 persons and injuring 75.

1980 Singer-songwriter Tim Hardin died.

1982 Paul "Bear" Bryant retired as head football coach at the University of Alabama.

1986 British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan died.

1989 Václav Havel was elected President of Czechoslovakia by the Federal Assembly.
1989 Jane Pauley said "goodbye" to NBC's "Today" show.

1992 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo granted Jean Harris (killer of Dr. Herman Tarnower) clemency.

1995 The Interstate Commerce Commission was formally dissolved.

2001 Fire in the Mesa Redonda shopping center in Lima, Peru, killed 291 persons.

2007 The New England Patriots became the first team in NFL history to finish the regular season with a 16-0 record.

2013 A suicide bomb attack killed 16 persons and wounded 40 atthe Volgograd-1 railway station in Russia.

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This page was last updated on December 29, 2018.