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.
• 1563 - Sebastian Castellio dies (b. 1515). French theologian
• 1586 - Francisco de Moncada was born. Spanish earl of Osuna/marquis of Aytona.
• 1634 - John Albert Vasa dies (b. 1612). Polish bishop.
• 1661 - Antoine Gérard de Saint-Amant dies (b. 1594). French poet.
• 1678 - Gotthard Wagner, was born. Composer.
• 1689 - Thomas Sydenham dies [b. 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, Elizabeth of Russia, was born (d. 1762). Tsarina of Russia, daughter of Peter the Great .
• 1721 - Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson (Madame de Pompadour) was born [† 15 Apr 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.
• 1743 - Hyacinthe Rigaud dies in Paris. One of the most prolific and successful French portrait painters of the Baroque period.
• 1766 - Charles Macintosh, was born in Glasgow [d. 1843]; Scottish chemist and manufacturer. He developed his famous method of waterproofing cloth (1823) .
• 1785 - Johan Herman Wessel dies (b. 1742). Norwegian poet.
• 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.
• 1796 - Johann Christian Poggendorff was born (d. 1877). German physicist.
• 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 and the first ever to be impeached.
• 1809 - William Ewart Gladstone was born [d. 1897]. 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 - Jacques-Louis David dies (b. 1748). French painter.
• 1840 - Anton Dohrn was born (d. 1909). Zoologist.
• 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.
• 1862 - American Civil War: End of the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou.
• 1865 - Abolitionist crusader William Lloyd Garrison published the last issue of The Liberator.
• 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 - Adolfo Alsina dies. Argentine politician.
• 1881 - Jess Willard was born (d. 1968). American boxer.
• 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 .
• 1894 - Christina Rossetti dies (b. 1830). English poet.
• 1895 - Leander Starr Jameson launched an abortive raid into the Transvaal to overthrow the Boer government of Paul Kruger.
• 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.
• 1899 - Nie Rongzhen was born (d. 1992). Chinese Communist military leader.
• 1903 - Candido Portinari was born (d. 1962). Brazilian painter.
• 1908 - Helmut Gollwitzer was born (d. 1993). German theologian.
• 1910 - Ronald Coase dies. British economist, Nobel Prize laureate.
• 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.
• 1911 - Alves Redol was born in Vila Franca de Xira (d. 29 Nov 1969). Portuguese writer.
• 1913 - The first serial motion picture, The Unwelcome Throne is released by Seligs Polyscope Company.
• 1914 - Billy Tipton was born (d. 1989). American musician.
• 1914 - Albert Tucker was born (d. 1999). Australian artist.
• 1916 - Grigori Rasputin dies (b. 1869). Russian monk.
• 1917 - Tom Bradley was born (d. 1998). Mayor of Los Angeles, California.
• 1921 - William Lyon Mackenzie King becomes Prime Minister of Canada.
• 1924 - Carl Spitteler dies (b. 1845). Swiss writer, Nobel Prize laureate.
• 1925 - French Comunist Party is created.
• 1926 - Rainer Maria Rilke dies (4 Dec 1875). German poet.
• 1927 - Andy Stanfield was born (d. 1985). American athlete.
• 1929 - Wilhelm Maybach dies [b. 1846] ; German engineer and industrialist who was the chief designer of the first Mercedes automobiles (1900-01).
• 1931 - Prince Gu of Korea was born (d. 2005)
• 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.
• 1934 - Tom Jarriel was born. American correspondent.
• 1936 - Mary Tyler Moore was born. American actress.
• 1936 - Ray Nitschke was born (d. 1998). American football player.
• 1936 - Angelina Muñiz-Huberman was born. French-born Mexican writer ( Dulcinea encantada; Huerto cerrado, huerto sellado; De magias y prodigios; La memoria del aire).
• 1936 - John Cornford dies murdered in Madrid (b. 27 Dec 1915). English author [The Last Mile to Huesca (1936) and Poems from Spain (1936)].
• 1937 - The Constitution of Ireland, changing the Irish Free State into Eire, went into effect.
• 1937 - Barbara Steele was born. British actress.
• 1937 - Don Marquis dies (b. 1878). American author.
• 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.
• 1941 - Ray Thomas was born. British musician (The Moody Blues)
• 1942 - Rick Danko was born (d. 1999) Canadian musician (The Band)
• 1946 - Abel de Lima Salazar dies in Lisbon (b. 19 Jul 1889). Portuguese physician, scientist and painter.
• 1946 - Marianne Faithfull, was born. Singer.
• 1947 - Ted Danson was born. American actor.
• 1949 - KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut becomes the first Ultra high frequency (UHF) television station to operate a daily schedule.
• 1951 - Yvonne Elliman was born. American disco singer
• 1952 - Gelsey Kirkland was born. American dancer
• 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.
• 1953 - Gali Atari was born. Israeli singer
• 1954 - Roger Voudouris was born. American singer and songwriter
• 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 - Metro of Lisbon (Portugal) is inaugurated.
• 1957 - Singers Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme were married in Las Vegas.
• 1959 - Patricia Clarkson was born. American Actress
• 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) .
• 1960 - Eden Phillpotts dies (b. 1862). British writer.
• 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. 1963 - Francisco Bustamante was born. Filipino billiard player.
• 1963 - Dave McKean was born. English artist and filmmaker
• 1966 - Dexter Holland, was born, Rock musician (The Offspring).
• 1967 - Paul Whiteman dies (b. 1890). The “King of Jazz”. His sucesses includes “My Blue Heaven” and “All of Me”.
• 1967 - Andy Wachowski was born. American director.
• 1967 - Edson Cordeiro was born. Brazilian singer.
• 1968 - Numa operação antiterrorista, comandos israelitas destroem 13 aviões de guerra libaneses.
• 1970 - Aled Jones was born. Welsh singer and television presenter
• 1970 - Kevin Weisman was born. American actor
• 1970 - Glen Phillips was born. American singer/songwriter (Toad The Wet Sprocket)
• 1972 - An Eastern Airlines Lockheed Tristar crashed on approach ro Miami, International Airport killing 101 .
• 1972 - Jason Kreis was born. American soccer player
• 1972 - Jude Law was born. English actor
• 1973 - Theo Epstein was born. Baseball general manager
• 1974 - Richie Sexson was born. Baseball player
• 1975 - A bomb explodes at New York City's LaGuardia Airport killing 11.
• 1978 - Alexis Amore was born. Peruvian actress, dancer, and model
• 1978 - Kieron Dyer was born. English footballer
• 1978 - LaToya London was born. American singer.
• 1980 - Tim Hardin was born (b. 1941). American musician
• 1980 - Nadezhda Mandelstam was born (b. 1899). Russian writer.
• 1981 - Angela Via was born. American singer
• 1983 - Mariage de Caroline de Monaco et Stefano Casiraghi.
• 1984 - Rajiv Gandhi wins landslide election victory (BBC)
• 1986 - Harold Macmillan dies in Sussex, England. Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• 1986 - Joaquim Namorado dies (b. 1914). Portuguese poet.
• 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. Novelist and playwright Václav Havel was unanimously elected president of Czechoslovakia without having to face an opposing candidate.
• 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.
• 1993 - Construction of the Tian Tan Buddha, the world's tallest outdoor bronze statue of the seated Buddha, was completed.
• 1995 - Nello Celio, President of Switzerland (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.
• 1998 - Six people have died after mountainous seas smashed into yachts taking part in the prestigious Sydney to Hobart race.
• 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 - A massive fire in the historic district of downtown Lima kills at least 274 people.
• 2001 - Cássia Eller dies in Rio de Janeiro (b. 10 Dec 1962). Brazilian singer and musician.
• 2003 - Earl Hindman dies (b. 1942). American actor.
• 2003 - Dinsdale Landen dies (b. 1932). English actor.
• 2003 - Bob Monkhouse dies (b. 1928). English comedian and game show host
• 2004 - Julius Axelrod dies (b. 1912). American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• 2004 - Liddy Holloway dies (b. 1947). New Zealand actress.
• 2005 - Officials Hope to Free Hostages in Yemen Soon. Yemeni authorities say they are hopeful of a speedy release of a kidnapped former high-ranking German official and his family seized by tribesmen in the eastern part of the country.