DAILY ALMANAC
Today is Sunday, Nov. 29, the 334th day of 2020. There are 32 days left in the year.
On this date in:
1864: A Colorado militia killed at least 150 peaceful Cheyenne Indians in the Sand Creek Massacre.
1910: British explorer Robert F. Scott’s ship Terra Nova set sail from New Zealand, carrying Scott’s expedition on its ultimately futile – as well as fatal – race to reach the South Pole first.
1924: Italian composer Giacomo Puccini died in Brussels before he could complete his opera “Turandot.” (It was finished by Franco Alfano.)
1929: Navy Lt. Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd, pilot Bernt Balchen, radio operator Harold June and photographer Ashley McKinney made the first airplane flight over the South Pole.
1952: President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower secretly left on a trip to Korea, keeping his campaign promise to assess the ongoing conflict first-hand.
1961: Enos the chimp was launched from Cape Canaveral aboard the Mercury-atlas 5 spacecraft, which orbited earth twice before returning.
1963: President Johnson named a commission headed by Earl Warren to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy.
1981: Film star Natalie Wood drowned in a boating accident off Santa Catalina Island, California, at age 43.
1987: A Korean Air 707 jetliner en route from Abu Dhabi to Bangkok was destroyed by a bomb planted by North Korean agents with the loss of all 115 people aboard.
2000: Bracing the public for more legal wrangling, Vice President Al Gore said in a series of TV interviews that he was prepared to contest the Florida presidential vote until “the middle of December.”
2001: George Harrison, the “quiet Beatle,” died in Los Angeles following a battle with cancer; he was 58.
2008: Indian commandos killed the last remaining gunmen holed up at a luxury Mumbai hotel, ending a 60-hour rampage through India’s financial capital by suspected Pakistani-based militants that killed 166 people.
2009: A gunman shot and killed four Lakewood, Washington, police officers at a coffee shop (suspect Maurice Clemmons was shot to death by a Seattle police officer two days later). Iran approved plans to build 10 industrial scale uranium enrichment facilities in defiance of U.N. demands it halt enrichment.
Blues musician John Mayall is 87. Actor Diane Ladd is 85. Singer-keyboardist Felix Cavaliere of The Rascals is 78. Actor Jeff Fahey (“Lost,” “The Marshal”) is 68. Director Joel Coen is 66. Actor-comedian Howie Mandel is 65. Actor Don Cheadle is 56. Singer Jonathan Knight of New Kids on the Block is 52. Keyboardist Frank Delgado of Deftones is 50. Actor Paola Turbay (“True Blood”) is 50. Actor Brian Baumgartner (“The Office”) is 48. Actor Julian Ovenden (“Downton Abbey”) is 45. Actor Anna Faris (“Mom,” “Scary Movie”) is 44. Gospel singer James Fortune is 43. Drummer Ringo Garza of Los Lonely Boys is 39. Actor-comedian John Milhiser (“Saturday Night Live”) is 39.