TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Saturday, Oct. 29. There are 63 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight:
On Oct. 29, 1929, “Black Tuesday” descended upon the New York Stock Exchange. Prices collapsed amid panic selling and thou- sands of investors were wiped out as America’s “Great Depression” began.
On this date:
In 1618, Sir Walter Raleigh, the English courtier, military adventurer and poet, was executed in London for treason.
In 1787, the opera “Don Giovanni” by Wolfgang Ama- deus Mozart had its world premiere in Prague.
In 1891, actor, comedian and singer Fanny Brice was born in New York.
In 1940, a blindfolded Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson drew the first number — 158 — from a glass bowl in America’s first peacetime military draft.
In 1956, during the Suez Canal crisis, Israel invaded Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. “The Huntley-brinkley Report” premiered as NBC’S nightly television newscast.
In 1960, a chartered plane carrying the Califor- nia Polytechnic State University football team crashed on takeoff from Toledo, Ohio, killing 22 of the 48 people on board.
In 1987, following the con- firmation defeat of Robert H. Bork to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, President Ronald Reagan announced his choice of Douglas H. Gins- burg, a nomination that fell apart over revelations of Ginsburg’s previous mari- juana use. Jazz great Woody Herman died in Los Angeles at age 74.
In 1998, Sen. John Glenn, at age 77, roared back into space aboard the shuttle Discovery, retracing the trail he’d blazed for America’s astronauts 36 years earlier.
In 2004, four days before Election Day in the U.S., Osama bin Laden, in a videotaped statement, directly admitted for the first time that he’d ordered the September 11 attacks.
In 2005, mourners slowly filed past the body of civil rights icon Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama, just miles from the downtown street where she’d made history by refusing to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man.
In 2018, a new-generation Boeing jet operated by the Indonesian budget airline Lion Air crashed in the Java Sea minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board; it was the first of two deadly crashes involving the 737 Max, causing the plane to be grounded around the world for nearly two years as Boeing worked on software changes to a flight-control system.
Ten years ago: Superstorm Sandy slammed ashore in New Jersey and slowly marched inland, devastating coastal communities and causing widespread power outages; the storm and its aftermath were blamed for at least 182 deaths in the U.S.
Five years ago: All but 10 members of the Houston Texans took a knee during the national anthem, reacting to a remark from team owner Bob Mcnair to other NFL owners that “we can’t have the inmates running the prison.”