29 November History
- 1760 - Major Roger Rogers takes possession of Detroit on behalf of Britain.
- 1787 - Louis XVI promulgates an edict of tolerance, granting civil status to Protestants.
- 1812 - The last elements of Napoleon Bonaparte's Grand Armee retreats across the Beresina River in Russia.
- 1863 - The Battle of Fort Sanders, Knoxville, Tenn., ends with a Confederate withdrawal.
- 1864 - Colonel John M. Chivington's 3rd Colorado Volunteers massacre Black Kettles' camp of Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians at Sand Creek, Colo.
- 1903 - An Inquiry into the U.S. Postal Service demonstrates the government has lost millions in fraud.
- 1923 - An international commission headed by American banker Charles Dawes is set up to investigate the German economy.
- 1929 - Commander Richard Byrd makes the first flight over the South Pole.
- 1931 - The Spanish government seizes large estates for land redistribution.
- 1939 - Soviet planes bomb an airfield at Helsinki, Finland.
- 1948 - The Metropolitan Opera is televised for the first time as the season opens with "Othello."
- 1948 - The popular children's television show, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, premieres.
- 1949 - The United States announces it will conduct atomic tests at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific.
- 1961 - NASA launches a chimpanzee named Enos into Earth orbit.
- 1962 - Algeria bans the Communist Party.
- 1963 - President Lyndon B. Johnson appoints Chief Justice Earl Warren head of a commission to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
29 November Birthdays
- 1803 - Christian Doppler, best known for his explanation of perceived frequency variation of sound and light waves, known as the Doppler effect.
- 1832 - Louisa May Alcott, novelist (Little Women).
- 1895 - Busby Berkeley, director (42nd Street).
- 1898 - C.S. Lewis, Christian writer.
- 1900 - Mildred Elizabeth Sisk, aka Axis Sally, Nazi propagandist.
- 1908 - Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., politician and Civil Rights leader.
- 1911 - Konrad Fuchs, German atomic physicist.
- 1918 - Madeleine L'Engle, writer (A Wrinkle in Time).