On November 29th...

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Liberation Day (Albania)

1268 Pope Clement IV died.

1314 King Philippe IV of France died.

1516 Painter Giovanni Bellini died.

1530 Cardinal Thomas Wolsey died.

1775 Sir James Jay invented invisible ink.

1781 The crew of the slave ship Zong dumped 142 African slaves into the sea in order to claim insurance for the "loss."

1791 The Chatham Islands were sighted by the HMS Chatham, commanded by William Broughton.

1799 Educator Bronson Alcott was born.

1803 Physicist Christian Doppler was born.

1811 American reformer Wendell Phillips was born.

1825 The first Italian opera in the United States, "Barber of Seville," premiered in New York City, New York.

1832 Author Louisa May Alcott was born.

1847 Missionary Marcus Whitman, his wife, and 12 others were killed by Cayuse Indians.

1864 The Colorado militia killed about 150 peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho at Sand Creek.

1870 Compulsory education was proclaimed in England.

1872 Newspaper publisher Horace Greeley died.

1874 Neurologist Egas Moniz was born.

1876 Nellie Tayloe Ross, the first woman to serve as Governor of a state and as Director of the U.S. Mint, was born.

1877 Thomas Edison demonstrated his hand-cranked phonograph for the first time.

1887 The United States received rights to Pearl Harbor, on Oahu, Hawaii.

1890 The first Army-Navy football game was played, at West Point (final score was Navy 24, Army 0).

1895 Film director Busby Berkeley was born.
1895 Liberian President William V. S. Tubman was born.

1897 The world's first motorcycle race was held in Surrey, England.

1898 Novelist C. S. Lewis was born.

1908 U. S. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., was born.

1910 The first U. S. patent for a traffic lights system was issued to Ernest Sirrine.

1915 Fire destroyed most of the buildings on Santa Catalina Island, California.

1916 The United States declared martial law in the Dominican Republic.

1917 A Supreme Allied War Council met in Versailles, France, to define war aims.

1918 Serbia annexed Montenegro.

1924 Composer Giacomo Puccini died.

1927 Sports journalist Vin Scully was born.

1928 U. S. Senator Paul Simon was born.

1929 Richard E. Byrd, Bernt Balchen, Harold June, and Ashley McKinley became the first persons to fly to the South Pole.

1932 Jacques Chirac, President of France, was born.

1933 The first state liquor stores were authorized, by Pennsylvania.

1934 The Chicao Bears beat the Detroit Lions, 19-16, in the first NFL game to be broadcast nationally.

1940 Musician Chuck Mangione was born.

1942 Actress Diane Ladd was born.

1944 Johns Hopkins Hospital performed the first open heart surgery.
1944 Albania was liberated from Nazi control.

1945 The Yugoslavian Socialist Republic was proclaimed.

1947 The U. N. General Assembly partitioned Palestine between Arabs and Jews.

1948 "Kukla, Fran, & Ollie" debuted on NBC.
1948 The first opera to be televised, "Othello," was broadcast from the Met (in New York City, New York).

1949 Comedian Garry Shandling was born.

1950 Aircraft pioneer Walter Herschel Beech died.

1954 Physicist Enrico Fermi died.

1955 Comedian Howie Mandel was born.

1957 The Baltimore Harbor Tunnel was opened to traffic.

1961 Freedom Riders were attacked by a white mob at a bus station in Mississippi.
1961 A Mercury-Atlas 5 rocketcarried a chimpanzee named Enos into orbit.

1963 A Trans-Canada Douglas DC-8 crashed soon after taking off from Dorval Airport near Montreal, Canada, killing all 118 persons aboard.
1963 The Beatles released "I Want to Hold Your Hand."

1966 The SS Daniel J. Morrell sank in a storm on Lake Huron, killing 28 of the 29 persons aboard.

1972 Nolan Bushnell released Pong (the first commercially successful video game) in Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale, California.

1974 Businessman H. L. Hunt died.

1981 Actress Natalie Wood died.

1982 Drag racer Ashley Force was born.

1986 Actor Cary Grant died.

1987 A Korean Air Boeing 707 exploded over the Thai-Burmese border, killing 115 persons.

1991 Actor Ralph Bellamy died.

1999 Game show host Gene Rayburn died.

2001 Musician George Harrison died.

2004 Actor John Drew Barrymore died.

2012 Bombs in Hillah and Karbala, Iraq, killed 30 persons and wounded 100.

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This page was last updated on November 28, 2018.