Today in History for December 29th

Highlights of this day in history: Noblemen in Russia kill Gregory Rasputin; Wounded Knee massacre takes place; Texas joins as the 28th state; Dissident playwright Vaclav Havel elected president of Czechoslovakia; First YMCA opens in Boston. (Dec. 29)

Video Transcript

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ED DONAHUE: December 29, 1916. Noblemen in Russia murder Grigori Rasputin, a monk with powerful influence over the country's royal family. But Rasputin proves hard to kill. First he's poisoned, then shot twice before he finally dies from drowning after being thrown into an icy river. The Russian revolution topples the monarchy the following year.

1890--

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- (SINGING) Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.

ED DONAHUE: In South Dakota, the Wounded Knee massacre takes place as some 300 Sioux Indians are killed by US troops sent to disarm them.

1845.

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- (SINGING) There's a yellow rose in Texas that I am going to see.

ED DONAHUE: Texas, a former Mexican territory turned independent republic, joins the United States as the 28th state. The dispute between the US and Mexico over Texas leads to war the following year.

1989, in what's then known as Czechoslovakia, a sign that the Iron Curtain of the Cold War is crumbling in Eastern Europe. Dissident playwright Václav Havel is elected his country's president, the first noncommunist to attain that post in more than four decades.

And 1851, the first American Young Men's Christian Association, the YMCA, is organized in Boston.

Today in history December 29. Ed Donahue, the Associated Press.