Events

At dawn on November 29, 1864, Colonel John Chivington led roughly 700 Colorado Territory militia into a sleeping encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho people at Sand Creek, despite the camp flying both an American flag and a white flag of truce. Over the next several hours, the militia killed between 150 and 200 people, the majority women, children, and elderly. The Sand Creek Massacre stands as one of the most documented atrocities in the American West. The Cheyenne and Arapaho at Sand Creek believed they were under government protection. Chief Black Kettle had traveled to Denver in September to negotiate peace with Colorado's territorial governor. He was told to camp near Fort Lyon and that his people would be safe. Black Kettle complied, settling approximately 750 people along the banks of Sand Creek. Major Scott Anthony at Fort Lyon knew the camp's location and the peace terms. Chivington, a former Methodist minister, was determined to attack regardless. His 100-day volunteers were nearing the end of their enlistment without having fought, and Chivington wanted a military victory for political purposes. He arrived at Fort Lyon on November 28, placed it under guard to prevent warnings, and marched through the night. The attack was indiscriminate. Soldiers killed women trying to surrender and children trying to hide. Bodies were mutilated and scalped. Three separate federal investigations condemned the massacre. A congressional committee called it "the foul and dastardly massacre" and stated that Chivington "deliberately planned and executed" the attack. No one was criminally prosecuted. The massacre shattered peace efforts on the Plains and ignited years of retaliatory warfare. Black Kettle, who survived Sand Creek, was killed four years later when Custer attacked his camp on the Washita River.

Commander Richard E. Byrd, navigator Bernt Balchen, radio operator Harold June, and photographer Ashley McKinley took off from the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf on November 29, 1929, in a Ford Trimotor named the Floyd Bennett. Roughly 18 hours later, they had become the first people to fly over the South Pole, completing one of the last great geographic firsts. Byrd had already claimed the first flight over the North Pole in 1926, though that achievement has been disputed by historians. The South Pole flight faced fewer questions but greater physical challenges. The route from the expedition's base, Little America, required crossing more than 800 miles of Antarctic terrain, including the 11,000-foot Transantarctic Mountains. The Ford Trimotor had a maximum altitude barely sufficient to clear the mountain passes. The critical moment came at the Liv Glacier. The heavily loaded plane could not gain enough altitude to clear the pass. Balchen circled repeatedly while the crew jettisoned emergency food to reduce weight. The Trimotor scraped over the ridge with terrifyingly little clearance. Once past the mountains, the flight to the Pole and back was relatively straightforward, though temperatures dropped to minus 30 degrees and navigation relied on dead reckoning over featureless white landscape. Byrd returned to a hero's welcome and a promotion to rear admiral. His expeditions established American claims in Antarctica and pioneered polar logistics that became critical during the Cold War. McMurdo Station, still the largest research base on the continent, sits near Little America. The flight proved that aviation could conquer even the planet's most forbidding geography, opening Antarctica to scientific exploration that continues today.