In 1910, British explorer Robert F. Scott’s ship Terra Nova set sail from New Zealand, carrying Scott’s expedition on its ultimately futile - and fatal - race to reach the South Pole first.
In 1924, Italian composer Giacomo Puccini died in Brussels before he could complete his opera “Turandot.” (It was finished by Franco Alfano.)
In 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.
In 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.)
In 1952, making good on his most dramatic presidential campaign promise, newly elected Dwight D. Eisenhower goes to Korea to see whether he can find the key to ending the bitter and frustrating Korean War.
In 1961, Enos the chimp was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard the Mercury-Atlas 5 spacecraft, which orbited earth twice before returning.
In 1961, A white mob attacked CORE’s Freedom Riders when they attempted to integrate the “all-white” waiting room at the Greyhound bus station in McComb, Miss., yelling, “Kill ‘em! Kill ‘em!” The five riders - Doratha “Dodie” Smith-Simmons, Jerome Smith, Alice Thompson, George Raymond and Tom Valentine - were from New Orleans and had already been active in the civil rights movement.
In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson named a commission headed by Earl Warren to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. LBJ forms commission to investigate Kennedy assassination | November 29, 1963 | HISTORY
In 1967, Robert S. McNamara resigns as Secretary of Defense.
In 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.
In 2001, former Beatle George Harrison died in Los Angeles following a battle with cancer. He was 58.
In 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.
In 2011, Conrad Murray, the physician convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 death of singer Michael Jackson, is sentenced in a Los Angeles County courtroom to four years behind bars. The iconic pop star died at age 50 at his California home after suffering cardiac arrest while under the influence of propofol, a surgical anesthetic given to him by Murray as a sleep aid.
In 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 vote was 138 in favor; nine members, including the United States, voted against and 41 abstained.)
In 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.
In 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.
In 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. (History.com 11/29/23)
