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- 1782 First nautical almanac in US published by Samuel Stearns, Boston
- 1800 Charles Goodyear founder of Goodyear Tire was born
- 1812 USS Constitution (Captain William Bainbridge) captures HMS Java off Brazil after a three hour battle.
- 1813 British soldiers burn Buffalo, New York during the War of 1812.
- 1813 Major General Phineas Riall attacks villages of Black Rock and Buffalo with a party of Canadian militia and Indians to get revenge on burning of Newark and Queenston on Dec. 10.
- 1835 The Treaty of New Echota is signed, ceding all the lands of the Cherokee east of the Mississippi River to the United States.
- 1837 Canadian militia destroy Caroline, a US steamboat docked at Buffalo
- 1837 Royal Navy Commander Andrew Drew 1792-1878 and a group of Canadian militiamen cross the Niagara River to Fort Schlosser, and capture the American supply steamer Caroline, burn the ship and set her adrife in the river towards Niagra FAlls
- 1837 Steam-powered threshing machine patented, Winthrop, Maine
- 1845 Texas is admitted as the 28th U.S. state.
- 1848 Gas lights first installed at White House (Polk's administration)
- 1848 Gaslights are installed in the White House.
- 1851 The first American YMCA opens in Boston, Massachusetts.
- 1851 The first YMCA in the USA is organized in Boston.
- 1852 Emma Snodgrass arrested in Boston for wearing pants
- 1860 The first British seagoing iron-clad warship, the HMS Warrior is launched.
- 1867 First telegraph ticker used by a brokerage house, Groesbeck and Co, New York
- 1876 11 passenger cars crash in a ravine near Ashtabula OH
- 1876 The Ashtabula River Railroad bridge disaster occurs, leaving 64 injured and 92 dead at Ashtabula, Ohio.
- 1877 Grand Trunk Railroad workers strike to support fired members of Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers; strike broken by use of militia and unorganized workers.
- 1879 The locomotive J.G. Haggart is taken over the ice of the Red River into Winnipeg by the contractor Joseph Whitehead to start construction westwards across the Prairies in the spring of 1880.
- 1890 300 Sioux Indians are killed by US troops at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
- 1890 Federal troops massacre 200+ captive Sioux at Wounded Knee, SD; Indian "war" in the west
- 1890 The "Battle of Wounded Knee" ends the last major Indian resistance to white settlement in America
- 1890 United States soldiers massacre more than 400 men, women and children of the Great Sioux Nation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
- 1891 Edison patents "transmission of signals electrically" (radio)
- 1896 First issue of newspaper Le Soleil is published.
- 1908 patent granted for a 4-wheel automobile brake, Clintonville WI
- 1911 Mongolia gains independence from the Qing dynasty.
- 1911 San Francisco Symphony formed
- 1911 Sun Yat-sen becomes the first President of the Republic of China.
- 1913 First movie serial, "Adventures of Kathlyn," premieres in Chicago
- 1921 William Lyon Mackenzie King succeeded Arthur Meighen as Canadian PM
- 1930 Sir Muhammad Iqbal's presidential address in Allahabad introduces the Two-Nation Theory and outlines a vision for the creation of Pakistan.
- 1931 Identification of heavy water publicly announced, HC Urey
- 1934 Japan renounces the London Naval Treaty of 1930 and the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922.
- 1934 Japan renounces the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930.
- 1934 The first college basketball game at New York City's Madison Square Garden is played between the University of Notre Dame and New York University.
- 1937 2nd Irish constitution goes into effect; Irish Free State renamed Erie
- 1937 Pan Am starts San Francisco-to-Auckland, New Zealand service
- 1937 The Irish Free State is replaced by a new state called Ireland with the adoption of a new constitution.
- 1938 Construction on Lake Washington Floating Bridge, Seattle, begins
- 1940 Germany begins the bombing of London during WWII, damaging many buildings, such as historic St. Mary's Cathedral.
- 1940 World War II: In The Second Great Fire of London, the Luftwaffe firebombs City of London, killing almost 200 civilians.
- 1944 Over France RCAF Flight Lt. Dick Audet destroys five German planes in ten minutes.
- 1945 In Ottawa DND releases World War II casualty statistics; 41,371 Canadians in service killed, 43,178 wounded, 10,844 made prisoners of war, 32 missing in action.
- 1948 US State Department announces work on placing objects into Earth orbit
- 1949 Hungary nationalized its industries
- 1949 KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut becomes the first Ultra high frequency (UHF) television station to operate a daily schedule.
- 1952 First transistorized hearing aid offered for sale (Elmsford NY)
- 1954 Kingdom of the Netherlands, with Netherlands and Netherlands Antilles as autonomous parts, comes into being
- 1955 Barbra Streisand's first recording "You'll Never Know" at age 13
- 1957 Entertainers Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme are married in Las Vegas.
- 1957 Singers Steve Lawrence and Edie Gorme wed in Las Vegas
- 1958 TV soap "Young Dr Malone" debuts
- 1960 Number one hit on UK music charts - Cliff Richard - I Love You
- 1963 Visitor posting - December 29 1963 Maryann Jones was born to Carl and Elaine Duncan Jones
- 1965 Supremes release "My World is Empty Without You"
- 1967 Parliament drops death penalty for murder, except policemen or prison guards; for five-year trial period.
- 1967 Star Trek's "The Trouble With Tribbles" first airs ( a classic)
- 1972 An Eastern Air Lines Lockheed "Tristar" crashes on approach to Miami International Airport, Florida, killing 101.
- 1972 Eastern Tristar Jumbo Jet crashes near Everglades killing 101
- 1975 11 killed, 75 hurt by terrorist bomb at LaGuardia Airport in NYC
- 1975 Eleven people die when a bomb explodes in the main terminal at LaGuardia Airport in New York.
- 1978 Shah of Iran, asks Shapour Bahktiar to form a civilian government
- 1978 Visitor posting - Christina L. Barber is born - USA
- 1980 Shuttle STS-1 moves from Vandenberg AFB to Launch Complex 39A
- 1983 Arnold Schwarzenegger was cited for driving without a license after he drove his Jeep into a ditch with Maria Shriver aboard. No one was hurt.
- 1983 US announced withdrawal from UNESCO
- 1984 Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi claims victory in parliamentary elections
- 1988 Soviet Red Army Team edges New York Islanders, 3-2 at Nassau Coliseum
- 1988 Victorian Post Office Museum in Australia closes
- 1988 Visitor posting - December 29 1988 Mary E. Rhodes was Born in Del RioTexas on Laughlin Air Force Base.
- 1989 Canada is the first country in the world to ban smoking on domestic airlines.
- 1989 On the final day of trading for the year and decade, the Japanese Nikkei 225 Average closes at an all-time high of 38,915.87.
- 1989 Riots break-out after Hong Kong decides to forcibly repatriate Vietnamese refugees.
- 1989 Vaclav Havel becomes the first non-communist elected as president of Czechoslovakia in 40 years.
- 1989 Vclav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia. He became the first non-Communist who attained the post in more than four decades.
- 1989 Visitor posting - Mason Munn was born - USA
- 1989 Wayne Gretzky and Martina Navratilova are named athletes of the decade by the Associated Press
- 1992 Fernando Collor de Mello, president of Brazil, tried to resign amidst corruption charges, but ended up being impeached.
- 1995 Visitor posting - Matt Pirone is born in Florida - USA
- 1996 A peace accord is signed in Guatemala, ending 36 years of civil unrest there.
- 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 chickens (1.25 million) to stop the spread of a potentially deadly influenza strain.
- 1997 Kmart announces the closure of 10 stores across Canada; finding it difficult to compete against WalMart.
- 1998 Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed over 1 million.
- 2001 A massive fire in the historic district of downtown Lima, Peru kills at least 274 people.
- 2001 Visitor posting - Janette and Luis got married
- 2008 Important Islamic date - Islamic New Year: December 29, 2008 (1430 A.H.)
- 2009 A Turkish court sentences a Kurdish man to life in prison for a minibus bombing in 2005 that killed five people.
- 2009 Akmal Shaikh becomes the first EU native to be executed in China in 50 years. Gordon Brown releases a statement indicating that he is appalled.
- 2009 An American Christian activist is reportedly arrested after crossing into North Korea from China, according to North Korean media.
- 2009 Bangladesh says it will repatriate 9,000 Rohingya refugees staying at camps in the country back to Burma.
- 2009 China displaces the U.S. as the largest overall buyer of Japanese goods in 2009.
- 2009 Iran's Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi says her sister Nooshin, a medical professor and human rights activist, was arrested by authorities the previous evening. Sources indicate journalists have also been detained.
- 2009 Serbia's Minister of Labour, Employment, and Social Affairs Rasim Ljajic resigns a job due to his inability to keep his promise to locate Ratko Mladic by the end of 2009.
- 2009 Somali pirates seize UK and Panamanian-flagged ships with international crews on board in the Gulf of Aden.
- 2009 Thailand completes its repatriation of over 4,000 Hmong refugees to neighbouring Laos.
- 2009 The Sudanese parliament approves legislation for a referendum on the independence of South Sudan.
- 2009 Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza, believed to have held Malawi's first gay engagement ceremony, are arrested and expected to be charged with gross public indecency.
- 2009 Two Italians are injured and one American is killed in a shooting incident in Badghis Province, Afghanistan.
More historical events added daily - keep checking back