It's Lewis Day!

[msmoon]

On This Day:
Wednesday November 29, 2006

This is the 333rd day of the year, with 32 days remaining in 2006.

Fact of the Day: kites

The first flying machine was a kite, flown about 3000 years before people got into the air. A basic kite consists of a frame covered with material, launched and held in the air by the upward push of wind currents but controlled from the ground. The Chinese were flying kites long before the first recorded reference to a wooden bird kite in 500 BC. Kites through time have had religious significance, have been used to estimate distance, and helped Benjamin Franklin prove the electrical nature of lightning.

Holidays

Feast day of St. Radbod, St. Brendan of Birr, St. Saturninus, martyr, and St. Saturninus or Sernin of Toulouse.

Events

• 1864 - A Colorado militia killed at least 150 peaceful Cheyenne Indians in the Sand Creek Massacre.
• 1890 - The first Army-Navy football game was played, at West Point, New Yprk, with Navy winning 24-0.
• 1929 - Commander Richard E. Byrd reported successfully flying over the South Pole. He had made headlines in 1926 by flying over the North Pole.
• 1945 - Yugoslavia was proclaimed a Federal People's Republic under Josip Tito's rule.
• 1947 - The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the partitioning of Palestine between Arabs and Jews and the creation of an independent Jewish state.
• 1950 - United Nations troops began a long, hard retreat out of North Korea under heavy fire from the Chinese. Chinese forces overran South Korea, and by the beginning of 1951 have captured Seoul, the capital.
• 1961 - NASA launched a chimpanzee named Enos into orbit around the Earth in Mercury-Atlas 5.
• 1963 - President Lyndon Johnson named a commission headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
• 1989 - Czechoslovakia ended 41 years of one-party communist rule when the parliament voted unanimously to repeal the constitutional clauses giving the Community Party a guaranteed leading role in the country and promoting Marxism-Leninism as the state ideology.
• 1996 - Evidence suggesting that water might be present on the Moon was published in "Science" magazine.
• 1999 - Protestant and Catholic adversaries formed a Northern Ireland government.

Births

• 1799 - Amos Bronson Alcott, American educator, philosopher of American Transcendentalism, and father of Louisa May Alcott.
• 1803 - Christian Johann Doppler, Austrian physicist.
• 1832 - Louisa May Alcott, American author ("Little Women," "Good Wives," Little Men").
• 1898 - C.S. Lewis, Irish-born British author, known for his works on Christianity and fantasy.
• 1949 - Garry Shandling, American comedian.

Deaths

• 1975 - Graham Hill, English racing driver.
• 1981 - Natalie Wood, American film actress, drowned in a yachting accident.
• 1986 - Cary Grant, British-born American film actor.
• 1991 - Ralph Bellamy, American stage and film actor.
• 2001 - George Harrison, British rock musician and member of the Beatles.