November 29 · This Day in America
At dawn, some 675 Colorado volunteers under Colonel John Chivington descend on a sleeping village of Cheyenne and Arapaho along Sand Creek. The people here believed they were at peace and under United States protection. Chief Black Kettle had been told to fly an American flag over his lodge so the soldiers would know his camp was friendly. He raised it, with a white flag of truce beneath it, and stood under it calling for calm. The soldiers fired anyway. By the time they were done, at least 150 people lay dead, most of them women, children, and the elderly. Some in the Army refused to take part and later testified to what they had seen; the testimony forced Congress to investigate and condemn it. This is part of the 250-year story, and it does not get softened. The flag Black Kettle trusted is the same flag this almanac honors. America has to be able to hold both of those facts at once.
Source: www.nps.gov
Also on this day · 1929
Aboard a Ford Tri-Motor named for a dead friend, Commander Richard Byrd and three men claw toward the bottom of the world. The plane cannot climb over the polar plateau, so the crew heaves emptied gas cans and survival food out the door to lighten her, clearing an 11,000-foot pass by a few hundred yards. Just after 1 a.m. on November 29, they reach the Pole and drop a small American flag onto the ice no one had ever flown above.
Source: www.history.com