On This Day:
Sunday December 29, 2013 This is the 363rd day of the year, with 2 days remaining in 2013. Fact of the Day: VW Beetle In 1945, the first Volkswagen Beetles were made in a factory in Germany. It was not until 1967 that the name "Beetle" or "Bug" was used for the car; before that, the car was referred to as the "Type 1", "1200", "1300", or "1500", with the numbers representing the engine size in cubic centimeters. The Beetle was first imported into the United States in 1949 with very little success. Then a second attempt to import them began in the early 1950s and in 1953 sales began to improve. In 1972, the Beetle overtook the Ford Model T as the most popular car ever made. In 1981, the 20,000,000th Beetle rolled off the production line in Mexico. The last new original Beetle was sold in the United States in 1978, but it continued to be produced in Mexico up to the 2004 model. In 1998, an updated model called the "New Beetle" appeared in the United States. Volkswagen means "people's car" in German.
Holidays Feast day of St. Thomas of Canterbury, St. Ebrulf or Evroult, St. Trophimus of Arles, and St. Maroellus Akimetes.
Poland: Kulig.
Events 1607 - Indian chief Powhatan spared John Smith's life because of the pleas of Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas.
1813 - The British burned Buffalo, New York, during the War of 1812.
1837 - Canadian militiamen destroyed the Caroline, a U.S. steamboat docked at Buffalo, New York.
1845 - Texas (comprised of the present state of Texas and part of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming) was admitted as the 28th state of the Union, with the provision that the area should be divided into no more than five states.
1851 - The first U.S. branch Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) was established, in Boston. The organization started in London in 1844.
1890 - The Wounded Knee massacre took place in South Dakota as some 300 Sioux Indians were killed by U.S. troops. It was the last major battle between Native Americans and U.S. troops.
1940 - London suffered its most devastating air raid, and approximately 1,500 fires were started, when Germany started dropping incendiary bombs on it during World War II.
1996 - The Guatemalan government and leaders of the leftist Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union signed a peace accord in Guatemala City, ending a war that lasted 36 years.
1998 - Khmer Rouge leaders apologized for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed one million lives.
Births 1800 - Charles Goodyear, American inventor of vulcanization process for rubber.
1808 - Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States of America (1865-1869).
1809 - William Gladstone, English statesman and four-time Prime Minister.
1876 - Pablo Casals, Spanish cellist.
1907 - Robert C. Weaver, the first African-American to serve on a President's cabinet (Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development).
1917 - Thomas Bradley, American, mayor of Los Angeles.
1937 - American actress and comedian Mary Tyler Moore.
Deaths 1170 - Archbishop Thomas Becket (Thomas á Becket), murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in England by four knights of King Henry II, apparently on orders of the king.
1919 - Sir William Osler, Canadian physician considered one of the greatest icons of modern medicine.
1986 - Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963.
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