Today in History.....December 29

On this day in …

* 1845, Texas was admitted as the 28th state

* 1913, shooting begins on The Squaw Man, the first feature-length film made in Hollywood. The movie, produced by the Jesse L. Lasky Company, helped establish the careers of director Cecil B. DeMille and producer Samuel Goldfish (later Goldwyn)

* 1934, Japan renounced the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930

* 1940, during World War II, Germany began dropping incendiary bombs on London

* 1950, trusts and would-be monopolies were put on notice, as the Celler-Kefauver Anti-merger Act, a potent piece of anti-trust legislation, made its way into the law books

* 1956, just days before an official announcement is to be issued by the Eisenhower administration, the New York Times leaks the news that the United States is preparing a major policy statement on the Middle East. In the wake of heightened tensions in the area caused by the French-British-Israeli invasion of Egypt in November, the announcement was greeted with caution both at home and abroad. The response from Egypt was decidedly negative, with the Egyptian government declaring that it wanted no outside interference in the region's problems.

* 1975, a bomb exploded in the main terminal of New York's LaGuardia Airport, killing 11 people. The perpetrators were never discovered

* 1989, playwright Vaclav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia by the country's Federal Assembly, becoming the first non-Communist to attain the post in more than four decades

* 2004, President Bush assembled a four-nation coalition to organize humanitarian relief for Asia and made clear the United States would help bankroll long-term rebuilding in the region leveled by a massive earthquake and tsunamis