November 29th

Today's Highlight in History:
On November 29th, 1952, President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower kept his campaign promise to visit Korea to assess the ongoing conflict.

On this date:
In 1530, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, onetime adviser to England's King Henry the Eighth, died.

In 1890, the Imperial Diet, forerunner of Japan's current national legislature, opened its first session, four days after its members were summoned by Emperor Meiji.

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 Lieutenant Commander Richard E. Byrd radioed that he'd made the first airplane flight over the South Pole.

In 1947, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the partitioning of Palestine between Arabs and Jews.

In 1961, "Enos" the chimp was launched from Cape Canaveral aboard the Mercury-Atlas Five spacecraft, which orbited earth twice before returning.

In 1963, President Johnson named a commission headed by Earl Warren to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy.

In 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced he was leaving the Johnson administration to become president of the World Bank.

In 1981, actress Natalie Wood drowned in a boating accident off Santa Catalina Island, California, at age 43.

In 1986, actor Cary Grant died in Davenport, Iowa, at age 82.

Ten years ago: In response to a growing pro-democracy movement in Czechoslovakia, the Communist-run Parliament ended the party's 40-year monopoly on power.

Five years ago: The House passed the revised General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade by a vote of 288-to-146. Fighter jets attacked the capital of Chechnya and its airport hours after Russian President Boris Yeltsin demanded the breakaway republic end its civil war.

One year ago: Swiss voters overwhelmingly rejected legalizing heroin and other narcotics.

"A conference is a meeting to decide where the next meeting will take place."

-- Anonymous.