TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – DEC 29
1170 Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, is murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by four knights of Henry II.
1607 Indian chief Powhatan spares John Smith’s life after the pleas of his daughter Pocahontas.
1812 The USS Constitution won a battle with the British ship HMS Java about 30 miles off the coast of Brazil. Before Commodore William Bainbridge ordered the sinking of the Java he had her wheel removed to replace the one the Constitution had lost during the battle.
1835 Treaty of New Echota is signed between the US government and representatives of a minority Cherokee political faction to cede all lands of the Cherokee east of the Mississippi River to the United States
1845 Texas (comprised of present-day Texas and part of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming) is admitted as the 28th state of the Union, with the provision that the area (389,166 square miles) should be divided into no more than five states “of convenient size.”
1851 The first Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) opened in Boston.
1852 Emma Snodgrass arrested in Boston for wearing pants
1862 Bowling ball invented
1890 The U.S. Seventh Cavalry massacred over 400 men, women and children at Wounded Knee Creek, SD. This was the last major conflict between Indians and U.S. troops.
1921 Sears Roebuck president Julius Rosenwald pledges $20 million of his personal fortune to help Sears through hard times.
1956 President Dwight Eisenhower asks Congress for the authority to oppose Soviet aggression in the Middle East.
1967 Star Trek’s “The Trouble With Tribbles” 1st airs
1972 Life magazine ceases publication
1975 11 killed, 75 hurt by terrorist bomb at LaGuardia Airport in New York NY
1989 Vaclav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia.
1997 Hong Kong begins slaughtering all its chickens to prevent bird flu
1998 Khmer Rouge leaders apologized for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed 1 million lives.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
