November 29 in History

Yi Seong-gye uproots the capital from Kaesŏng to Hanyang, establishing a new political center that anchors the Joseon Dynasty for five centuries. This strategic relocation shifts Korea's power dynamic toward the Han River valley, creating the enduring urban core we know today as Seoul.

By a vote of 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions, the United Nations General Assembly approved Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947, recommending the partition of British-controlled Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. Jewish communities celebrated in Tel Aviv. Arab leaders rejected the plan outright. The vote did not bring peace. Instead, it triggered a conflict that remains unresolved nearly eight decades later. Britain had governed Palestine under a League of Nations mandate since 1920 and was desperate to leave. Jewish immigration, accelerated by the Holocaust, had intensified tensions with the Arab population. British forces found themselves caught between Jewish paramilitary groups demanding statehood and Arab communities opposing what they viewed as dispossession. In February 1947, Britain announced it was handing the problem to the United Nations. The UN Special Committee proposed dividing the territory into a Jewish state covering 56 percent of the land, an Arab state covering 43 percent, and an international zone encompassing Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Jews constituted roughly one-third of the population and owned about seven percent of the land. The plan gave the Jewish state more territory because it included the sparsely populated Negev Desert. Arab delegations called the proposal fundamentally unjust. The vote required a two-thirds majority and passed after intense lobbying. The United States and Soviet Union both supported partition. The day after the vote, violence erupted across Palestine. The British mandate expired on May 14, 1948, and Israel declared independence that evening. Five Arab armies invaded the next day. The war created approximately 700,000 Palestinian refugees, an exodus known as the Nakba, and established the borders that remain contested to this day.

One week after John F. Kennedy's assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Executive Order 11130 on November 29, 1963, establishing a commission to investigate the murder. Led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the seven-member body would produce the most scrutinized government report in American history, concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and that no conspiracy was involved. Johnson moved quickly for political reasons. Rumors of Soviet or Cuban involvement threatened to escalate into an international crisis. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had already declared Oswald a lone assassin, and Johnson wanted an authoritative civilian investigation to calm the public. The commission included members of both parties: Senators Russell and Cooper, Representatives Boggs and Ford, former CIA Director Allen Dulles, and banker John J. McCloy. The Warren Commission worked for ten months, interviewing 552 witnesses and reviewing tens of thousands of documents. Its 888-page report concluded that Oswald fired three shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, with one missing, one causing Kennedy's fatal head wound, and one passing through both Kennedy and Governor Connally. This "single bullet theory," devised by assistant counsel Arlen Specter, became the report's most controversial element. Public trust eroded almost immediately. Critics challenged the single bullet trajectory, questioned reliance on FBI and CIA materials, and noted that key evidence had been withheld or destroyed. A 1979 House Committee concluded that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy." Polls consistently show a majority of Americans doubt the lone-gunman conclusion. The Warren Commission's report, intended to provide closure, instead became an enduring symbol of institutional distrust.

A coin-operated cabinet in a Sunnyvale, California, bar became so popular that it broke down within days because the coin box overflowed. Pong, installed at Andy Capp's Tavern on November 29, 1972, was the first commercially successful video game, and its success proved that electronic entertainment could generate serious money. Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell had built an industry. Bushnell had been obsessed with interactive electronic entertainment since encountering Spacewar!, a game developed at MIT in the early 1960s. His first commercial attempt, Computer Space, was too complicated for bar patrons. For Pong, engineer Al Alcorn designed the simplest possible game: two paddles and a ball, controlled by knobs, with a score displayed at the top. Bushnell told Alcorn the game should be so intuitive that a drunk person could play it. The instructions read: "Avoid missing ball for high score." The prototype at Andy Capp's attracted immediate attention. Patrons lined up before the bar opened. The machine earned four times what a typical pinball machine generated. When it broke down, the bar owner called Alcorn, who discovered the coin mechanism had jammed because the milk carton serving as a coin box was overflowing with quarters. Bushnell realized he had a phenomenon and began manufacturing Pong machines as fast as Atari's small team could build them. Pong was not truly original. Ralph Baer had created a similar game for the Magnavox Odyssey home console, released earlier in 1972, and Magnavox later won a patent infringement suit. But Pong captured public imagination and launched the arcade era. Within two years, Atari sold over 8,000 cabinets. By 1975, a home version became a best-selling Christmas gift. The video game industry, now generating over $180 billion annually, traces its commercial origins to a broken coin box in a California tavern.