NOW & THEN
29 OCTOBER
1618: English explorer and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded at the Palace of Westminster for allegedly conspiring against King James I of England (James VI of Scotland).
1682: William Penn landed at Chester, Pennsylvania.
1787: Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni was first performed, in Prague.
1859: Spain declared war on Morocco.
1863: Swiss philanthropist Henri Dunant founded the International Red Cross.
1889: Queen Victoria granted Cecil Rhodes the rights to Zambezia, a province of Mozambique.
1929: “Black Tuesday” – socalled when Wall Street crashed, leading to the Great Depression.
1945: The first ballpoint pen went on sale – 45 years after it was patented.
1947: The Benelux union was formed by Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg.
1956: Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula and troops pushed on towards the Suez Canal, just 20 miles away.
1958: Boris Pasternak refused to accept the Nobel Prize for literature.
1960: Cassius Clay, who would later change his name to Muhammad Ali, won his first professional fight against Tunney Hunsacker.
1964: A collection of gems, including the 565 carat (113g) Star of India, were stolen by thieves from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
1967: London criminal Jack Mcvitie was murdered by the Kray twins, leading to their eventual imprisonment.
1969: The first-ever computerto-computer link was established on ARPANET, the precursor to the internet.
1983: More than half-a-million people demonstrated against cruise missiles in The Hague, Netherlands.
1985: Lester Piggott rode Full Choke at Nottingham to record his 4,349th winner. This was thought to be the end of his career in Britain – he eventually retired in 1995.
1986: The final section of the M25 motorway around London was opened by prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
1987: Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns won the world middleweight title, making him the first boxer to win a world title at four different weights.
1991: The American Galileo spacecraft made its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid.
1994: A man was arrested outside the White House in Washington after spraying the building with automatic gunfire while Bill Clinton, the president, watched television inside.
1995: Orkney police started an investigation after 25 grey seal pups were found shot near Burwick on South Ronaldsay.
1998: A fire at The Gothenburg nightclub in Sweden claimed 63 lives and injured 200.
2004: In Rome, European heads of state signed the Treaty and Final Act to establish the first European Constitution.
2005: More than 60 people died in a series of bombings in Delhi.