History of 29 May
1910 – An airplane raced a train from Albany, NY, to New York City. The airplane pilot Glenn Curtiss won the $10,000 prize.
1912 – Fifteen women were dismissed from their jobs at the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia, PA, for dancing the Turkey Trot while on the job.
1916 – The official flag of the president of the United States was adopted.
1916 – U.S. forces invaded the Dominican Republic and remained until 1924.
1922 – Ecuador became independent.
1922 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that organized baseball was a sport, not subject to antitrust laws.
1932 – World War I veterans began arriving in Washington, DC. to demand cash bonuses they were not scheduled to receive for another 13 years.
1951 – C.F. Blair became the first man to fly over the North Pole in a single-engine plane.
1953 – Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became first men to reach the top of Mount Everest.
1962 – Buck (John) O’Neil became the first black coach in major league baseball when he accepted the job with the Chicago Cubs.
1965 – Ralph Boston set a world record in the broad jump at 27-feet, 4-3/4 inches, at a meet held in Modesto, CA.
1973 – Tom Bradley was elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.
1974 – U.S. President Nixon agreed to turn over 1,200 pages of edited Watergate transcripts.
1978 – In the U.S., postage stamps were raised from 13 cents to 15 cents.
1981 – The U.S. performed a nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site.
1985 – Thirty-nine people were killed and 400 were injured in a riot at a European Cup soccer match in Brussels, Belgium.
1986 – Colonel Oliver North told National Security Advisor William McFarlane that profits from weapons sold to Iran were being diverted to the Contras.
1988 – U.S. President Reagan began his first visit to the Soviet Union in Moscow.
1988 – NBC aired “To Heal A Nation,” the story of Jan Scruggs’ effort to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
1990 – Boris Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian republic by the Russian parliament.
1997 – The ruling party in Indonesia, Golkar, won the Parliament election by a record margin. There were a boycott movement and rioting that killed 200 people.
1999 – Space shuttle Discovery completed the first docking with the International Space Station.
2000 – Fiji’s military took control of the nation and declared martial law following a coup attempt by indigenous Fijians in mid-May.
2001 – In New York, four followers of Osama bin Laden were convicted of a global conspiracy to murder Americans. The crimes included the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people.
2001 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that disabled golfer Casey Martin could use a cart to ride in tournaments.
2004 – The National World War II Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
2008 – A double earthquake, of combined magnitude 6.1, strikes Iceland near the town of Selfoss, injuring 30 people.
2012 – A 5.8-magnitude earthquake hits northern Italy near Bologna, killing at least 24 people.
2015 – The Obama administration removed Cuba from the U.S. terrorism blacklist. The two countries had severed diplomatic relations in January of 1961.
Celebrating Birthday Today
- 1981 – Andrey Arshavin, Russian footballer
- 1982 – Nataliya Dobrynska, Ukrainian heptathlete
- 1982 – Matt Macri, American baseball player
- 1982 – Kim Tae-Kyun, South Korean baseball player
- 1984 – Carmelo Anthony, American basketball player
- 1984 – Nia Jax, Australian-American professional wrestler
- 1984 – Funmi Jimoh, American long jumper
- 1984 – Andreas Schäffer, German footballer
- 1984 – Ina Wroldsen, Norwegian singer and songwriter
- 1985 – Nathan Horton, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1987 – Lina Andrijauskaitė, Lithuanian long jumper
- 1987 – Issac Luke, New Zealand rugby league player
- 1987 – Kelvin Maynard, Dutch footballer
- 1987 – Noah Reid, Canadian actor, producer, and screenwriter
- 1987 – Rui Sampaio, Portuguese footballer
- 1988 – Muath Al-Kasasbeh, Jordanian captain and pilot (d. 2015)
- 1988 – Cheng Fei, Chinese gymnast
- 1988 – Steve Mason, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1989 – Ezekiel Ansah, Ghanaian-American football player
- 1989 – Diego Barisone, Argentinian footballer (d. 2015)
- 1989 – Riley Keough, American model, and actress
- 1990 – Joe Biagini, American baseball pitcher
- 1992 – Sarah Moundir, a Swiss tennis player
- 1993 – Jana Čepelová, a Slovak tennis player
- 1993 – Maika Monroe, American actress, and kiteboarder
- 1993 – Grete Šadeiko, Estonian heptathlete
- 1998 – Markelle Fultz, American basketball player
- 1999 – Park Ji-hoon, South Korean singer and actor