Pocahontas was a Native American woman of the Powhatan nation and the daughter of its chief, Powhatan. In 1607, on December 29, she saved the life of Captain John Smith, the leader of a tiny colony in Jamestown, Virginia. Or maybe she didn’t. The events were reported by Smith himself, but only years later, and there’s a bit of controversy about how accurate his eventual account really was.

Smith’s claim, in a letter he wrote in 1616, was that ten years before he had been captured by a Native American hunting party and would have been executed except for Pocahontas’ intervention. On the other hand, Smith also reported briefly in 1608 on the same encounter, which in that case didn’t involve either capture or the threat of execution — on the contrary he shared in a feast.

Whatever actually happened that December 29, Pocahontas reportedly did eventually befriend Smith and the colonists, and helped feed them when they were starving. She stopped visiting the colony when Smith disappeared and the colonists told her he was dead. This wasn’t true; Smith had actually sailed back to England for medical care after being injured. When Pocahontas later married John Rolfe, one of the colonists, they eventually traveled to England themselves, where Pocahontas discovered Smith had not died after all. That, along with the episode in 1613 when the colonists really did capture her and hold her for ransom, may have informed her opinion of the Europeans. Either way, it probably should have. Pocahontas’ experiences with the truthfulness (or lack thereof) and aggression of Europeans might have been useful to other Native Americans many years later.

One example comes from December 29, 1835, when the Treaty of New Echota was signed in New Echota, Georgia. The treaty called for the Cherokee people to give up all their land east of the Mississippi River in exchange for $5 million, to be distributed throughout the Cherokee people, plus additional funds for other property. The treaty also stated that any Cherokee choosing to remain behind would be granted citizenship in whichever state they were in, as well as grants of 160 acres of land. All the other Cherokee were to move west of the Mississippi.

Pocahontas’ experiences might have been useful to other Native Americans many years later.

One major issue with the treaty was who exactly agreed to it. It was negotiated with the “Treaty Party,” a minority of the Cherokee who didn’t represent the whole nation. Nevertheless, the US Senate ratified the treaty, whereupon the US proceeded to ignore it. The money never arrived, and far from receiving citizenship and a land grant, most of the Cherokee who hadn’t moved were forcibly relocated by the army in what’s known today as the Trail of Tears. Although to be honest, there are other, similar forced relocations of native people in the US, and some of those are also called Trails of Tears. Another provision of the Treaty of New Echota was that the Cherokee were entitled to a delegate in the US House of Representatives. It took until 2019 for that provision to be mentioned again.

Another example is December 29, 1890: the date of the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota. The Lakota Sioux had been escorted to a site by the US Cavalry and made camp there. Another unit of Cavalry troops surrounded the camp on December 29 and marched in, intending to disarm everyone (there are differing stories about why they thought they needed to do that). Although reports disagree on some details, the overall picture seems to be chaos, a gun going off, possibly by accident, and a subsequent massacre by the Cavalry of as many as 300 men, women, and children. Most of the men had already given up their weapons and faced the Cavalry’s rifles and “Hotchkiss guns” — horse-drawn howitzers — with their bare hands. In spite of the Cavalry having overwhelming firepower, a number of soldiers were awarded medals after the massacre.

The strategic idea of overwhelming firepower, though, is usually that it’s so obviously overwhelming that you do not have to use it. That was certainly the idea behind the HMS Warrior, a frigate launched by the British Royal Navy on December 29, 1860. The Warrior was a giant step forward in warships because for the first time a naval vessel had steam-powered propellers, an iron hull, and armor plating. It was the biggest, fastest, and most capable warship in the world at the time. Its launch also marked the end of the line for wooden warships and for the prevailing ideas about naval warfare. Up to that point large wooden ships with several decks of cannons (“ships of the line”) would form a line and blast away at each other. The Warrior was designed with a different strategy altogether; she had 40 guns — fewer than a ship of the line — but was faster and (theoretically at least) more maneuverable, so could pursue ships and force a battle when she had a clear advantage.

The HMS Warrior still exists; she’s now a museum ship you can visit in Portsmouth, England. Since there was another HMS Warrior in the Royal Navy when the old ship was restored, technically her name is now HMS Warrior (1860). The ship never took part in major battles — maybe that “overwhelming firepower” strategy really sometimes works.

The whole thing kicked off after a coup d’état in 1954.

Neither side managed to achieve that kind of strategic advantage in Guatemala’s Civil War. It lasted for 36 years, from 1960 to 1996, and ended on December 29 when the government and the opposing Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity organization (URNG) signed a treaty that ended the conflict and transformed URNG into a political party. The whole thing had kicked off when a coup d’état deposed the elected president in 1954 — and it eventually came out that the US government had organized and equipped that coup.

Another conflict the US was involved in financing, both during and afterward was one you’re familiar with: World War II. The Anglo-American Loan Agreement was signed in 1946 to provide money — $3.75 billion — to England to fund ongoing military activities after the war. The terms of the loan were pretty favorable; the interest rate was set at just 2%. And it was a very long-term loan — England finally paid it off in full on December 29, 2006.

There have been Hollywood feature films made about some December 29 historical events. That’s partly thanks to another December 29 historical event: Cecil B. DeMille began filming the very first Hollywood feature on that day in 1913. The movie was The Squaw Man, a silent film that was, appropriately enough for the first Hollywood feature film, a western. In an odd turn of events, The Squaw Man is not only the first feature from Hollywood, but also the only film to be made three times by the same director: DeMille released a remake five years later in 1918, and in 1931 made the same movie yet again, that time with sound.

In between the first and second versions of The Squaw Man, another famous creator released a first effort. It was James Joyce, and his first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, was published in the US on December 29, 1916. Joyce was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1882 but moved away in 1904 and thereafter only returned for visits. He was living in Paris on December 29, 1937, the day the Irish Free State was replaced by Ireland when a new Constitution took effect after a referendum and general election. You can imagine the scene in Dublin people were celebrating in the streets. I don’t know what the weather was, but late December in Dublin might very well have been rainy. So picture thousands of people all in their raincoats — or I guess they would have called them “macintoshes”.

If it was raining, forcing Dubliners into their macintoshes that December 29, that would have been pretty appropriate, seeing as how the macintosh — or actually the waterproof fabric raincoats are made of — was invented by Charles Macintosh, who was born in December 29, 1766. His innovation was to bond two layers of fabric together with a layer of rubber in the middle. Coincidentally, another inventor who specialized in rubber (and also named Charles) was also born on December 19 — it was Charles Goodyear, born December 29, 1800. Goodyear invented vulcanized rubber; the process that made all sorts of rubber products possible, from tires to snow boots. But the reason his name sounds familiar is almost certainly because of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company — which Charles Goodyear had nothing to do with. The company was founded by Frank Seiberling many years after Goodyear died, and named after him as a tribute.