TODAY IN HISTORY

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.

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.

1947: The U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the partitioning of Palestine between Arabs and Jews; 33 members, including the United States, voted in favor of the resolution, 13 voted against while 10 abstained. (The plan, rejected by the Arabs, was never implemented.)

1961: Enos the chimp was launched from Cape Canaveral aboard the Mercury-Atlas 5 spacecraft, which orbited earth twice before returning. 1963: President Lyndon B. Johnson named a commission headed by Earl Warren to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. 1972: The coin-operated video arcade game Pong, created by Atari, made its debut at Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California.

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: Former Beatle George Harrison 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.

2017: “Today” host Matt Lauer was fired for what NBC called “inappropriate sexual behavior” with a colleague.