POPnews - November 29th

[The animation! That music! Those graphics!]
1777 - When San Jose was founded by José Joaquín Moraga - as el Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe - it was the first civilian settlement, or pueblo, in Alta California.

1781 - On orders of Captain Luke Collingwood the crew of the slave ship Zong murdered 133 sick and dying Africans they were holding captive by dumping them into the sea so that they could later claim the insurance on them; before he could face justice, though, Collingwood died of the disease that had been ravaging the ship throughout the entire voyage.

1807 - The Portuguese Royal Family fled Lisbon for their richest colonial holding - Brazil - a day ahead of the French troops of Napoleon Bonaparte.

1830 - An armed rebellion now known as the November Uprising - which was waged against Russian rule in Poland - began.

1845 - The Sonderbund or 'separate alliance' - formed by the union of Swiss cantons Lucerne, Fribourg, Valais, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden and Zug - was defeated by the joint forces of the remaining Swiss cantons under General Guillaume-Henri Dufour, ending a 26-day civil war in Switzerland.

1847 - Missionaries Dr Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and 15 others were killed by Cayuse and Umatilla Indians at the Whitman Massacre, causing the Cayuse War.

1850 - A treaty known as the Punctation of Olmütz was signed in Olmutz (now known as Olomouc) following which Prussia abandoned the Erfurt Union and offered diplomatic capitulation to the Austrian Empire, which then took over the leadership of German Confederation.

1864 - During the Indian Wars Colorado volunteers led by Colonel John Chivington massacred at least 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho noncombatants at the Sand Creek Massacre in the Colorado Territory.

1877 - Thomas Edison demonstrated his new invention, the phonograph, for the first time.

1890 - The Meiji Constitution went into effect in Japan and the country's first Diet convened.

1893 - Ziqiang Institute, today known as Wuhan University, is founded by Zhang Zhidong, governor of Hubei and Hunan Provinces in late Qing Dynasty of China after his memorial to the throne is approved by the Qing Government.

1915 - Fire destroyed most of the buildings on California's Santa Catalina Island.

1944 - The first surgery (on a human) to correct blue baby syndrome was performed by Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas.

1945 - The Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was declared.

1961 - As part of Project Mercury's Mercury-Atlas 5 mission Enos, a chimpanzee, was launched into space; the spacecraft orbited the Earth twice and splashed-down off the coast of Puerto Rico.

1963 - President Lyndon Johnson appointed Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren to head the Warren Commission, whose investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy produced some interesting results.

1965 - The Canadian Space Agency launched the satellite Alouette 2.

1972 - Nolan Bushnell (co-founder of Atari) released Pong as an arcade game at Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California.

1975 - Race car driver Graham Hill died when the Piper Aztec aircraft he was piloting clipped some trees while landing at a golf course in north London; also dead in the crash were Embassy Hill team manager Ray Brimble, mechanics Tony Alcock and Terry Richards, up-and-coming driver Tony Brise and designer Andy Smallman.
*