On this day in History - Dec. 29

• 1170 - Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered by four knights acting under the orders of Henry II.
• 1223 - El Papa Honorio III aprueba la regla de la Orden de los Frailes Menores (Franciscanos) fundada por San Francisco de Asis en 1209.
• 1586 - Francisco de Moncada Spanish was born, earl of Osuna/marquis of Aytona.
• 1678 - Gotthard Wagner, was born, composer.
• 1689 - Thomas Sydenham dies [1624]; English physician who has been called “the English Hippocrates” as a founder of clinical medicine and epidemiology, emphasizing detailed observations of patients and maintaining accurate records.
• 1709 - Elisabeth Petrovna, was born, tsarina of Russia / Daughter of Peter the Great .
• 1721 - Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson (Madame De Pompadour) was born [d.1764] mistress of French King Louis XV.
• 1721 - Occupation de l'Île Maurice par les Français, qu'ils baptisent Ile de France .
• 1731 -Brook Taylor dies [b. 1685] British mathematician noted for his contributions to the development of calculus. In 1708, Taylor produced a solution to the problem of the centre of oscillation. His (1715) “Direct and Indirect Methods of Incrementation” introduced what is now called the calculus of finite differences.
• 1766 - Charles Macintosh, was born in Glasgow; Scottish chemist and manufacturer. He developed his famous method of waterproofing cloth (1823), [d.1843] .
• 1788 - Christian Jürgensen Thomsen was born [d.1865) Danish archaeologist who devoloped the three-part system of prehistory, naming the Stone, Bronze, and Iron ages for the successive stages of man's technological development in Europe.
• 1799 - Joaquín Acosta, was born [d. 1852]; Colombian scientist, historian, and statesman who sought to preserve knowledge of his country's early history.
• 1800 - Charles Goodyear was born; invented vulcanized rubber [d. 1860].
• 1808 - Andrew Johnson, was born [d. 1875];17th President of the United States .
• 1809 - William Ewart Gladstone was born , statesman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom .
• 1813 - Alexander Parkes was born [d. 1890]; British chemist and inventor who developed various industrial processes and materials.
• 1813 - War of 1812: British soldiers burn Buffalo, New York .
• 1816 - Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig was born [d. 1895]; he was a founder of the physicochemical school of physiology in Germany. He developed the kymograph (1847) and a mercurial blood-gas pump (1859) which enables the separation of blood from the mixture of gases in it for analysis.
• 1825 - Simon Bolivar Palacios abandonne la Présidence de la Bolivie, qu'il laisse à son lieutenant Antonio José de Sucre Alcala.
• 1825 - Muere Jacques David, pintor francés que introdujo el neoclasicismo en su país.
• 1840 - Anton Dohrn, zoologist (d. 1909).
• 1841 - Se le concede por gracia la nacionalidad chilena al naturalista francés Claudio Gay.
• 1845 - Texas became the 28th state in the United States.
• 1851 - The first American-based YMCA opens, in Boston, Massachusetts .
• 1859 - Venustiano Carranza, was born; President of México (1915-20) .
• 1860 - The first British seagoing iron-clad warship, the HMS Warrior is launched.
• 1869 - Se funda el Observatorio Astrónomico de Córdoba, Argentina.
• 1876 - The Ashtabula River Railroad bridge disaster, 64 injured, 92 dead at Ashtabula, Ohio. .
• 1876 -Pablo Casals was born in Venrdell; Spanish cellist, conductor, composer (d. 1973) .
• 1877 - Muere el político argentino Adolfo Alsina.
• 1890 - The last major battle of the Indian Wars, at Wounded Knee Creek, took place with hundreds of Indian men, women, and children of the Great Sioux Nation massacred.
• 1891 - Thomas Edison patents the radio.
• 1891 - Leopold Kronecker, German mathematician, dies [b. 1823] His major contributions in elliptic functions, the theory of algebraic equations, and the theory of algebraic numbers. However the topics he studied were restricted by the fact that he believed in the reduction of all mathematics to arguments involving only the integers and a finite number of steps.
• 1893 - Vera Brittain was born , novelist, poet .
• 1896 - David Alfaro Siqueiros, was born; Mexican painter/muralist (Liberation of Chile).
• 1898 - Se estrena en Munich el poema sinfónico Don Quijote, de Richard Straus.
• 1911 - Sun Yat-sen becomes the first President of the Republic of China .
• 1911 - Klaus Fuchs was born [d.1988]; Emil Klaus Julius Fuchs was a German-born physicist and spy who was arrested and convicted (1950) for giving vital American and British atomic-research secrets to the Soviet Union.
• 1913 - The first serial motion picture, The Unwelcome Throne is released by Seligs Polyscope Company.
• 1916 - Grigori Rasputin, Russian monk, dies (b. 1869) .
• 1921 - William Lyon Mackenzie King becomes Prime Minister of Canada .
• 1925 - Le Parti communiste français est crée .
• 1929 - Wilhelm Maybach dies [b. 1846] ; German engineer and industrialist who was the chief designer of the first Mercedes automobiles (1900-01).
• 1934 - The first college basketball game at Madison Square Garden in New York City is played, between the University of Notre Dame and New York University .
• 1934 - Japan renounces the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930.
• 1936 - Mary Tyler Moore was born, actress .
• 1937 - The Constitution of Ireland, changing the Irish Free State into Eire, went into effect.
• 1938 - Jon Voight, was born, American actor (Deliverance, Midnight Cowboy) .
• 1940 -During World War II, Germany began dropping incendiary bombs on London.
• 1941-Tullio Levi-Civita dies [b. 1873]; Italian mathematician known for his work on the absolute differential calculus with its applications to the theory of relativity .
• 1946 - Marianne Faithfull, was born, singer.
• 1949 - KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut becomes the first Ultra high frequency (UHF) television station to operate a daily schedule.
• 1952- A coelacanth, once thought to have been extinct for 75 million years, is caught off the Comoros and sent to scientists in South Africa.
• 1954 -William Merriam Burton dies [b. 1865]; American chemist who developed a thermal cracking process for increasing the proportion of gasoline obtainable from crude petroleum.
• 1956 - Em Lisboa, foi inaugurado o Metro, uma rede subterrânea de transporte colectivo.
• 1957 - singers Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme were married in Las Vegas.
• 1960 - Frederick Fuller Russell dies [b. 1870]; American scientist who developed the first successful U.S. typhoid fever vaccine.
• 1960 - Henri-Gaston Busignies was born [d. 1981]; French-born American electronics engineer permitted the U.S. Navy during World War II to detect enemy transmissions ( from wich a radio transmission was coming) throught his high-frequency direction finders (HF/DF) Busignies invented also the radiocompass (1926) .
• 1961 - Anton Flettner dies [b. 1885]; German inventor of the rotor ship, a vessel propelled by revolving cylinders mounted vertically on the deck. He also developed a device that allowed airplane pilots to raise or lower a plane's nose for better control.
• 1966 - Dexter Holland, was born, Rock musician (The Offspring).
• 1967 - Aos 76 anos de idade morre Paul Whiteman, o “Rei do Jazz”. Seus sucessos incluem “My Blue Heaven” e “All of Me”.
• 1968 - Numa operação antiterrorista, comandos israelitas destroem 13 aviões de guerra libaneses.
• 1972 - An Eastern Airlines Lockheed Tristar crashed on approach ro Miami, International Airport killing 101 .
• 1975 - A bomb explodes at New York City's LaGuardia Airport killing 11.
• 1983 - Mariage de Caroline de Monaco et Stefano Casiraghi.
• 1986 Harold Macmillan, 92, former British Prime Minister, dies in Sussex, England .
• 1987 - Yuri Romanenko, cosmonaute soviétique, revient sur terre après avoir établi le record de la plus longue mission dans l'espace soit 326 jours, 11 heures et 40 minutes.
• 1989 - Vaclav Havel was elected President of Czechoslovakia.
• 1989 - Hermann Julius Oberth dies [b. 1894]; German scientist who is considered to be one of the founders of modern astronautics.
• 1989 - Riots break-out after Hong Kong decides to forcibly repatriate Vietnamese refugees.
• 1992 - Fernando Collor de Mello, president of Brazil, resigned.
• 1992 - Itamar Franco is the new President of Brazil.
• 1992- President Daniel Torotich arap Moi wins the first multi-party elections held in Kenya for 26 years.
• 1995 - Nello Celio, President of Switz (1972), dies at 81.
• 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.
• 1999 - Jerzy Waldorff, dies; Polish film and music critic .
• 1999 -The Nasdaq composite index closed above 4,000 for the first time, ending the day at 4,041.46.
• 2001 - Cássia Eller dies.
  29 Dez - Dia Internacional da Biodiversidade