Historical Events on Monday, 29th December

29/12/2024

Jeju Air Flight 2216 crashes into a wall in Muan, South Korea, killing 179 of the 181 occupants. It is the worst aircraft accident on South Korean soil in history.

Jeju Air Flight 2216 was a scheduled international passenger flight operated by Jeju Air from Suvarnabhumi Airport near Bangkok, Thailand, to Muan International Airport in Muan County, South Korea. On 29 December 2024, when the Boeing 737-800 operating the flight was approaching Muan, a bird strike occurred, with both of the engines ingesting birds, causing an apparent loss of thrust in the right engine. The pilots issued a mayday alert, performed a go-around, and on the second landing attempt, the landing gear did not deploy and the airplane belly-landed well beyond the normal touchdown zone. It overran the runway at high speed, collided with the approach lighting system, and crashed into a berm encasing a concrete structure that supported an antenna array for the instrument landing system (ILS). The collision killed all 175 passengers and 4 of the 6 crew members. The surviving two cabin crew were seated in the rear of the plane, which detached from the fuselage, and were rescued with injuries.

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29/12/2023

South Africa files a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice over Israeli conducts in the Gaza Strip.

South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. Its nine provinces are bounded to the south by 2,798 kilometres of coastline that stretches along the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean; to the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe; to the east and northeast by Mozambique and Eswatini; and it encloses Lesotho. Covering an area of 1,221,037 square kilometres, the country has a population of over 63 million people, making it the sixth-most populated country in Africa. Pretoria is the administrative capital, while Cape Town, as the seat of Parliament, is the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein is regarded as the judicial capital. The largest and most populous city is Johannesburg, followed by Cape Town and Durban.

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29/12/2020

A magnitude 6.4 earthquake hits near the town of Petrinja in Sisak-Moslavina County, Croatia, killing seven people.

At 12:19 PM CET on 29 December 2020, an earthquake of magnitude 6.4 Mw hit central Croatia, with an epicenter located roughly 3 km (1.9 mi) west-southwest of Petrinja. The maximum felt intensity was estimated at VIII to IX (Destructive) on the European macroseismic scale. Before this event there were three foreshocks, the strongest of which had a magnitude of 5.2 Mw on the day before. The earthquake was followed by numerous aftershocks, the strongest of which had a magnitude of 4.9 Mw.

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29/12/2013

A suicide bomb attack at the Volgograd-1 railway station in the southern Russian city of Volgograd kills at least 18 people and wounds 40 others.

In December 2013, two separate suicide bombings a day apart targeted mass transportation in the city of Volgograd, in the Volgograd Oblast of Southern Russia, killing 34 people overall, including both perpetrators. The attacks followed a bus bombing carried out in the same city two months earlier.

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Seven-time Formula One champion Michael Schumacher suffers a massive head injury while skiing in the French Alps.

Formula One (F1) is the highest class of worldwide racing for open-wheel, single-seater formula racing cars run by Formula One Group and sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The FIA Formula One World Championship has been one of the world's premier forms of motorsport since its inaugural running in 1950 and is often considered to be the pinnacle of motorsport. The word formula in the name refers to the set of rules all participant cars must follow. A Formula One season consists of a series of races, known as Grands Prix. Grands Prix take place in multiple countries and continents on either purpose-built circuits or closed roads.

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29/12/2012

A Tupolev Tu-204 airliner crashes in a ditch between the airport fence and the M3 highway after overshooting a runway at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, Russia, killing five people and leaving three others critically injured.

The Tupolev Tu-204 is a twin-engined medium-range narrow-body jet airliner capable of carrying 210 passengers, designed by Tupolev and produced by Aviastar-SP and Kazan Aircraft Production Association. First introduced in 1995, it was intended to be broadly equivalent to the Boeing 757, with slightly lower range and payload, and had competitive performance and fuel efficiency in its class.

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29/12/2006

The UK settles its Anglo-American loan, post-WWII loan debt.

The Anglo-American loan, officially the Anglo-American Loan Agreement, was a loan made to the United Kingdom by the United States on 15 July 1946. The loan kept the British economy afloat after the Second World War. The loan was negotiated by British economist John Maynard Keynes and American diplomat William L. Clayton. Problems arose on the American side, with many in Congress reluctant, and with sharp differences between the treasury and state departments. The loan was for US$3.75 billion, £2.2 billion at a low 2% interest rate; Canada loaned an additional US$1.9 billion £607 million. The British economy in 1947 was hurt by a provision that called for convertibility into dollars of the wartime sterling balances the British had borrowed from India and others, but by 1948, the Marshall Plan included financial support that was not expected to be repaid. Repayment was completed in 2006, after it was extended six years.

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29/12/2003

The last known speaker of Akkala Sami dies, rendering the language extinct.

Akkala Sámi, also referred to, particularly in Russia, as Babin Sámi, was a Sámi language spoken in the Sámi villages of Aʼkkel, Čuʼkksuâl and Sââʼrvesjäuʼrr, in the inland parts of the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Formerly erroneously regarded as a dialect of Kildin Sámi, it has recently become recognized as an independent Sámi language that is most closely related to its western neighbor Skolt Sámi, although the two are somewhat mutually intelligible.

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29/12/1998

Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the Cambodian genocide that claimed over one million lives.

Khmer Rouge is the name that was popularly given to members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), and by extension to Democratic Kampuchea, which ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The name was coined in the 1960s by Norodom Sihanouk to describe his country's heterogeneous, communist-led dissidents, with whom he allied after the 1970 Cambodian coup d'état.

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29/12/1996

Guatemala and leaders of Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity sign a peace accord ending a 36-year civil war.

Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in northern Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the south and the Gulf of Honduras to the northeast.

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29/12/1994

Turkish Airlines Flight 278 (a Boeing 737-400) crashes on approach to Van Ferit Melen Airport in Van, Turkey, killing 57 of the 76 people on board.

Turkish Airlines Flight 278, operated by a Boeing 737-4Y0 registered TC-JES and named Mersin, was a domestic scheduled flight from Ankara Esenboğa Airport to Van Ferit Melen Airport in eastern Turkey that crashed on 29 December 1994 during its final approach to land in driving snow. Five of the seven crew and 52 of the 69 passengers lost their lives, while 2 crew members and 17 passengers survived with serious injuries.

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29/12/1992

Fernando Collor de Mello, president of Brazil, tries to resign amidst corruption charges, but is then impeached.

Fernando Affonso Collor de Mello is a Brazilian politician who served as the 32nd president of Brazil from 1990 to 1992, when he resigned in a failed attempt to stop his impeachment trial by the Brazilian Senate. Collor was the first president democratically elected after the end of the Brazilian military dictatorship. He became the youngest president in Brazilian history, taking office at the age of 40. After he resigned from the presidency, the impeachment trial on charges of corruption continued. Collor was found guilty by the Senate and disqualified from holding elected office for eight years (1992–2000). He was later acquitted of ordinary criminal charges in his judicial trial before Brazil's Supreme Federal Court, for lack of valid evidence.

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29/12/1989

Czech writer, philosopher and dissident Václav Havel is elected the first post-communist President of Czechoslovakia.

Václav Havel was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992, prior to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on 31 December, before he became the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. He was the first democratically elected president of either country after the fall of communism. As a writer of Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays and memoirs.

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The Nikkei 225 for the Tokyo Stock Exchange hits its all-time intra-day high of 38,957.44 and closing high at 38,915.87, serving as the apex of the Japanese asset price bubble.

The Nikkei 225, or the Nikkei Stock Average , more commonly called the Nikkei or the Nikkei index, is a stock market index for the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE). It is a price-weighted index, operating in the Japanese Yen (JP¥), and its components are reviewed twice a year. The Nikkei 225 measures the performance of 225 highly capitalised and liquid publicly owned companies in Japan from a wide array of industry sectors. Since 2017, the index is calculated every five seconds. It was originally launched by the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1950, and was taken over by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper in 1970, when the Tokyo Exchange switched to the Tokyo Stock Price Index (TOPIX), which is weighed by market capitalisation rather than stock prices.

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29/12/1975

A bomb explodes at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, killing 11 people and injuring more than 75.

On December 29, 1975, a bomb detonated near the Trans World Airlines (TWA) baggage reclaim terminal at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, United States, killing 11 people and seriously injuring 74 others. Investigators theorized that it might have been committed by anti-Yugoslavia Croatians or agents of the Yugoslavian government intending to discredit the opposition, but the crime remains unsolved. The attack occurred during a four-year period of heightened terrorism within the United States, and 1975 was especially volatile, with bombings in New York City and Washington, D.C. and two assassination attempts on President Gerald Ford.

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29/12/1972

Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 (a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar) crashes in the Florida Everglades on approach to Miami International Airport, Florida, killing 101 of the 176 people on board.

Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a scheduled flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, to Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida. Shortly before midnight on December 29, 1972, the Lockheed L-1011-1 TriStar crashed into the Florida Everglades. All three cockpit crew members, 2 of the 10 flight attendants, and 96 of the 163 passengers were killed. 75 people survived, with 58 of them suffering serious injuries.

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29/12/1940

World War II: in the Second Great Fire of London, the Luftwaffe fire-bombs London, England, killing almost 200 civilians.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, the latter enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the only nuclear weapons used in war. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 60 to 75 million people. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

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29/12/1937

The Irish Free State is replaced by a new state called Ireland with the adoption of a new constitution.

The Irish Free State, also known by its Irish name Saorstát Éireann, was the Irish state established in December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921, initially as a Dominion. The treaty ended the three-year Irish War of Independence between the forces of the Irish Republic—the Irish Republican Army (IRA)—and British Crown forces.

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29/12/1934

Japan renounces the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930.

The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was signed during 1922 among the major Allies of World War I, which agreed to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction. It was negotiated at the Washington Naval Conference in Washington, D.C., from November 1921 to February 1922 and signed by the governments of the British Empire, United States, France, Italy, and Japan. It limited the construction of battleships, battlecruisers and aircraft carriers by the signatories. The numbers of other categories of warships, including cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, were not limited by the treaty, but those ships were limited to 10,000 tons displacement each.

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29/12/1930

Sir Muhammad Iqbal's presidential address in Allahabad introduces the two-nation theory and outlines a vision for the creation of Pakistan.

Sir Muhammad Iqbal was an Islamic philosopher and poet. His poetry in Urdu is considered to be among the greatest of the 20th century, and his vision of a cultural and political ideal for the Muslims of British India is widely regarded as having animated the impulse for the Pakistan Movement. He is commonly referred to by the honorific Allamah and widely considered one of the most important and influential Muslim thinkers and Islamic religious philosophers of the 20th century.

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29/12/1913

Cecil B. DeMille starts filming Hollywood's first feature film, The Squaw Man.

Cecil Blount DeMille, often known in popular culture as Mr. DeMille was an American filmmaker and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he created 70 features including silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of American cinema and the most commercially successful producer-director in film history, with many films dominating the box office three or four at a time. His films were distinguished by their epic scale and by his cinematic showmanship. His silent films included social dramas, comedies, Westerns, farces, morality plays, and historical pageants.

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29/12/1911

Mongolia gains independence from the Qing dynasty, enthroning 8th Jebtsundamba Khutughtu as Khagan of Mongolia.

Mongolia is a landlocked country in the East Asia region. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, and covers an area of 1,564,116 square kilometers, making it the 18th-largest country in the world and the second largest landlocked country after Kazakhstan, as well as the largest landlocked country that does not border an inland sea. With a population of 3.5 million, Mongolia is the world's most sparsely populated sovereign state, excluding partially unrecognized Western Sahara. The country constitutes a significant portion of the Mongolian Plateau, and its natural environment is characterized by grassy steppe, mountains to the north and west, and the Gobi Desert to the south. Ulaanbaatar, the capital and largest city, is home to roughly half of the country's population.

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29/12/1890

Wounded Knee Massacre: On Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, 300 Lakota are killed by the United States 7th Cavalry Regiment.

The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as the Battle of Wounded Knee, involved nearly three hundred Lakota people killed by soldiers of the United States Army. More than 250 and up to 300 Lakota people were killed and 51 wounded. Twenty-five U.S. soldiers were killed and 39 were wounded. Nineteen soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor specifically for Wounded Knee, and overall 31 for the campaign.

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29/12/1876

The Ashtabula River railroad disaster occurs, leaving 64 injured and 92 dead at Ashtabula, Ohio.

The Ashtabula River railroad disaster was caused by the collapse of a bridge over the Ashtabula River near the town of Ashtabula, Ohio, in the United States on Friday, December 29, 1876. A train of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, named the Pacific Express, was passing over the bridge as it collapsed, falling into the icy river. All but the lead locomotive plunged into the river. The train's oil lanterns and coal-fired heating stoves set the wooden cars alight. Firefighters declined to extinguish the flames, leaving individuals to try to pull survivors from the wreck. Many who survived the crash burned to death in the wreckage. The accident killed approximately 92 of the 160 people aboard. It was the worst rail accident in the U.S. in the 19th century and the worst rail accident in U.S. history until the Great Train Wreck of 1918. It remains the third-deadliest rail accident in U.S. history.

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29/12/1874

The military coup of Gen. Martinez Campos in Sagunto ends the failed First Spanish Republic and the monarchy is restored as Prince Alfonso is proclaimed King of Spain.

Arsenio Martínez-Campos y Antón, was a Spanish officer who rose against the First Spanish Republic in a military revolution in 1874 and restored Spain's Bourbon dynasty. Later, he became Captain-General of Cuba. Martínez Campos took part in wars in Africa, Mexico and Cuba and in the Third Carlist War.

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29/12/1862

American Civil War: The Battle of Chickasaw Bayou ends in a Union defeat as forces under General William T. Sherman are repulsed with heavy losses by Confederate troops under General John C. Pemberton.

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States, which they saw as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war lasted a little over four years, ending with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.

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29/12/1860

The launch of HMS Warrior, with her combination of screw propeller, iron hull and iron armour, renders all previous warships obsolete.

HMS Warrior is a 40-gun steam-powered armoured frigate built for the Royal Navy in 1859–1861. She was the name ship of the Warrior-class ironclads. Warrior and her sister ship HMS Black Prince were the first armour-plated, iron-hulled warships, and were built in response to France's launching in 1859 of the first ocean-going ironclad warship, the wooden-hulled Gloire. Warrior conducted a publicity tour of Great Britain in 1863 and spent her active career with the Channel Squadron. Obsolescent following the 1873 commissioning of the mastless and more capable HMS Devastation, she was placed in reserve in 1875, and was "paid off" – decommissioned – in 1883.

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29/12/1845

The United States annexes the Republic of Texas and admits it as the 28th state.

The Republic of Texas was the only state to enter by treaty into the United States and admitted to the Union as the 28th state on December 29, 1845.

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29/12/1835

The Treaty of New Echota is signed, ceding all the lands of the Cherokee east of the Mississippi River to the United States.

The Treaty of New Echota was a treaty signed on December 29, 1835, in New Echota, Georgia, by officials of the United States government and representatives of a minority Cherokee political faction, the Treaty Party.

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29/12/1812

USS Constitution, under the command of Captain William Bainbridge, captures HMS Java off the coast of Brazil after a three-hour battle.

USS Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, is a three-masted wooden-hulled heavy frigate of the United States Navy. She is the world's oldest commissioned warship still afloat. She was launched in 1797, one of six original frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794 and the third constructed. The name "Constitution" was among ten names submitted to President George Washington by Secretary of War Timothy Pickering in March or May for the frigates that were to be constructed. Joshua Humphreys designed the frigates to be the young Navy's capital ships, and so Constitution and her sister ships were larger and more heavily armed and built than standard frigates of the period. She was built at Edmund Hartt's shipyard in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts. Her first duties were to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the Quasi-War with France and to defeat the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War.

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29/12/1778

American Revolutionary War: British forces under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell defeat American forces under Major General Robert Howe and capture the port city of Savannah, Georgia.

The American Revolutionary War, also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which American Patriot forces organized as the Continental Army and commanded by George Washington defeated the British Army. The conflict was fought in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war's outcome seemed uncertain for most of the war, but Washington and the Continental Army's decisive victory in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 led King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain to negotiate an end to the war. In 1783, in the Treaty of Paris, the British monarchy acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation.

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29/12/1607

According to John Smith, Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan leader Wahunsenacawh, successfully pleads for his life after tribal leaders attempt to execute him.

John Smith was an English soldier, explorer, admiral of New England, and author. He was knighted for his services to Sigismund Báthory, Prince of Transylvania, and his friend Mózes Székely. Following his return to England from a life as a soldier of fortune and as a slave, he played an important role in the establishment of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America, in the early 17th century. He was a leader of the Virginia Colony between September 1608 and August 1609, and he led an exploration along the rivers of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay, during which he became the first English explorer to map the Chesapeake Bay area. Later, he explored and mapped the coast of New England.

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29/12/1503

The Battle of Garigliano was fought between a Spanish army under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba and a French army commanded by Ludovico II, Marquess of Saluzzo.

The Battle of Garigliano was fought on 29 December 1503 between a Spanish army under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba and a French army commanded by Ludovico II, Marquis of Saluzzo, resulting in a Spanish victory.

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29/12/1170

Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is assassinated inside Canterbury Cathedral by followers of King Henry II; he subsequently becomes a saint and martyr in the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church.

Thomas Becket, also known as Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas of London and later Thomas à Becket, was an English cleric and statesman who served as Lord Chancellor from 1155 to 1162, and then as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his death in 1170. He is known for his conflict with King Henry II over the rights and privileges of the Church and was murdered by followers of the king in Canterbury Cathedral. He was canonised by Pope Alexander III two years after his death. He is venerated as a saint and martyr by the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion.

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