NOW & THEN
DECEMBER 29
1170: Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by four knights, apparently acting on orders of King Henry II.
1675: English parliament ordered closure of all coffee houses. It was believed they had become hotbeds of radicalism from which malicious rumours about the government were spread.
1813: British forces burned Buffalo, New York state during the War of 1812.
1860: Britain’s first ironclad warship, Warrior, was launched.
1890: In the battle of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, the last major conflict between Native Americans and United States troops, the US 7th Cavalry massacred more than 200 Sioux indians.
1903: French Equatorial Africa separated into Gabon, Chad and Ubangi-shari.
1911: Sun Yat-sen became the first president of the Republic of China.
1914: The first Zeppelin appeared over the British coast.
1921: US, Britain, France, Italy and Japan signed Washington treaty to limit naval armaments. It was renounced by Japan on the same day 13 years later.
1930: Radio Luxembourg began broadcasting.
1931: The discovery of heavy water (deuterium) publicly announced by US chemist HC Urey.
1933: Jews protested over immigration restrictions in Palestine.
1940: Eight Christopher Wren churches and Guildhall, London, were destroyed when German bombers dropped 10,000 bombs in the raid called “the second Fire of London”.
1955: Barbra Streisand made her first recording, You’ll Never Know, at the age of 13.
1962: United Nations troops occupied Elisabethville, Katanga.
1962: British racing driver Graham Hill won the South African Grand Prix to finish the Formula One season as World Champion by 12 points.
1972: Sixteen survivors from a crashed Uruguayan plane which had been chartered by a rugby team en route to Montevideo, were rescued in the Andes. The crash happened on 13 October and it was revealed that their survival had been possible because they ate the flesh of dead companions.
Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos ended his elected term and began to rule on the basis of a takeover decree.
1986: Thousands of activists led by students from Peking Teachers’ University marched through the Chinese capital.
1989: Czechoslovakian parliament elected playwright Vaclav Havel as president.
1995: The Conservative MP Emma Nicholson defected to the Liberal Democrats, cutting prime minister John Major’s Commons majority to three.
2001: A fire at the Mesa Redonda shopping centre in Lima, Peru, killed at least 291.
2007: Thousands of tributes poured in after Motherwell captain Phil O’donnell collapsed and died on the pitch minutes before the end of his side’s Clydesdale Bank Premier League match against Dundee United.