Today in History - December 29th
1170: Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in England.
1607: Powhatan, the Indian Chief, spares John Smith's life after the pleas of his daughter Pocahontas. born
1778: British troops, attempting a new strategy to defeat the colonials in America, capture Savannah, the capital of Georgia. In some of the bloodiest fighting of the Revolutionary War, American and French troops failed to take Savannah.
1808: Andrew Johnson, 17th president of the United States born
1809: British statesman William Gladstone born
1813: The British burned Buffalo, New York, during the War of 1812.
1845: Texas (comprised of the present State of Texas and part of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming) admitted as the 28th state, with the provision that the area (389, 166 square miles) should be divided into no more than five states "of convenient size."
1848: Gas lights were installed at the White House for the first time. (some sources 1849)
1851: The first American Young Men's Christian Association was organized, in Boston.
1890: The last major conflict of the Indian wars takes place at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota after Colonel James W. Forsyth of the 7th Cavalry tries to disarm Chief Big Foot and his followers. Some 300 Sioux Indians were killed by US troops sent to disarm them.
1934: Japan renounced the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930.
1940: In a radio interview, President Roosevelt proclaims the U.S. is the arsenal of democracy.
1940: During World War Two, Germany began dropping incendiary bombs on London.
1948: Tito declares Yugoslavia will follow its own Communist line.
1956: President Eisenhower asks Congress for the authority to oppose Soviet aggression in the Mideast.
1981: President Reagan curtails Soviet trade in reprisal for Polish policy.
1983: The United States announced its withdrawal from UNESCO.
1992: The United States and Russia announced agreement on a nuclear arms reduction treaty.
1998: Two top Khmer Rouge leaders apologized for the deaths of as many as two million people during their regime in the 1970s, and asked Cambodians to forget the past.