History of the Day for:
December 29
- 1170: Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas A. Becket was murdered by supporters of King Henry II in Canterbury Cathedral in England.
- 1782: Samuel Stearns in Boston published The first nautical almanac in the United States.
- 1845: Texas was admitted as the 28th state of the Union.
- 1848: Gas lights were first installed at the White House.
- 1851: The first American Young Men's Christian Association was organized, in Boston.
- 1862: The bowling ball was invented.
- 1890: The Wounded Knee massacre took place in South Dakota. Some 300 Sioux Indians were killed by U.S. troops sent to disarm them.
- 1891: Thomas Edison patented the "transmission of signals electrically" over the airwaves.
- 1908: A patent was granted for a four-wheel automobile brake in Clintonville, Wisc.
- 1930: Fred P. Newton completed what is thought to be the longest swim ever, a distance of 1826 miles, when he swam in the Mississippi River from Ford Dam, Minn., to New Orleans.
- 1949: The first UHF television station began operating on a regular basis in Bridgeport, Conn.
- 1952: The first transistorized hearing aid was offered for sale in Elmsford, N.Y.
- 1954: The Kingdom of the Netherlands, with Netherlands and Netherlands Antilles as autonomous parts, came into being.
- 1955: Barbra Striesand's made her first recording, "You'll Never Know," at age 13.
- 1967: The Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" aired.
- 1982: Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant ended his career with an Alabama win over Illinois 21-15, his 323rd victory in 38 years of coaching.
- 1982: A Bob Marley postage stamp was issued in Jamaica.
- 1989: Jane Pauley said goodbye to NBC's "Today" show as she co-hosted for the last time.
- 1992: Fernando Collor de Mello, president of Brazil, tries to resign amidst corruption charges, but is then impeached.
- 1996: Guatemala and leaders of Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union sign a peace accord ending a 36-year civil war.
- 1997: Hong Kong begins to kill all the nation's 1.25 million chickens to stop the spread of a potentially deadly influenza strain.
- 1998: Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed over 1 million.
- 2001: A fire at the Mesa Redonda shopping center in Lima, Peru, kills at least 291.
- 2003: The last known speaker of Akkala Sami dies, rendering the language extinct.