THIS DATE IN HISTORY

Today is Nov. 29. 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.

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.

1981: Film star Natalie Wood drowned at age 43 while boating off California’s Santa Catalina Island with her actor husband Robert Wagner and actor Christopher Walken.

1986: Actor Cary Grant died in Davenport, Iowa, at age 82.

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.

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.

2012: The United Nations voted overwhelmingly to recognize a Palestinian state, a vote that came exactly 65 years after the General Assembly adopted a plan to divide Palestine into separate states for Jews and Arabs. (The 2012 vote was 138 in favor; nine members, including the United States, voted against and 41 abstained.)

2013: A police helicopter crashed onto a pub in Glasgow, Scotland, killing 10 people.

2017: “Today” host Matt Lauer was fired for what NBC called “inappropriate sexual behavior” with a colleague; a published report accused him of crude and habitual misconduct with women around the office.

2018: In a surprise guilty plea, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen confessed that he lied to Congress about a Moscow real estate deal he pursued on Trump’s behalf during the 2016 campaign.

2020: Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York City would reopen its school system to in-person learning, and raise the number of days a week many children attend class, even as the coronavirus pandemic intensified in the city.

2021: A federal judge blocked the Biden administration from enforcing a coronavirus vaccine mandate on thousands of health care workers in 10 states that had brought the first legal challenge against the requirement.

2022: Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy for a violent plot to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential win, handing the Justice Department a major victory in its massive prosecution of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.