Today in History
Today is Sunday, Oct. 29, the 302nd day of 2023. There are 63 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Oct. 29, 1929, “Black Tuesday” descended on the New York Stock Exchange. Prices collapsed amid panic selling and thousands 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 Amadeus 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.
• In 1960, a chartered plane carrying the California Polytechnic State University football team crashed on takeoff from Toledo, Ohio, killing 22 of the 48 people on board.
• In 1987, following the confirmation defeat of Robert H. Bork to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, President Ronald Reagan announced his next choice of Douglas H. Ginsburg, a nomination that fell apart over revelations of Ginsburg’s previous marijuana use.
• In 1998, Sen. John Glenn, at age 77, returned to space aboard the shuttle Discovery, retracing the trail he had blazed as the first American to orbit the Earth 36 years earlier.
• In 2004, Osama bin Laden, in a videotaped statement, directly admitted for the first time that he’d ordered the September 11 attacks, and told Americans “the best way to avoid another Manhattan” was to stop threatening Muslims’ security.
• In 2005, mourners slowly filed past the casket 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 2012, 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.
• In 2013, a 6.4-magnitude earthquake in southwestern Pakistan killed at least 215 people.
• In 2015, Paul Ryan was elected the 54th speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
• In 2017, 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.”
• 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.
• In 2022, more than 150 people were killed and dozens more injured in South Korea after being crushed by a large crowd pushing forward on a narrow street during Halloween festivities in Seoul.
Today’s Birthdays: Former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is 85. Rock musician Denny Laine is 79. Actor Richard Dreyfuss is 76. Actor Kate Jackson is 75. Actor Dan Castellaneta (TV: “The Simpsons”) is 66. Comic strip artist Tom Wilson Jr. (“Ziggy”) is 66. Actor Finola Hughes is 64. Singer Randy Jackson (the Jacksons) is 62. Rock musician Peter Timmins (Cowboy Junkies) is 58. Actor Joely Fisher is 56. Rapper Paris is 56. Actor Rufus Sewell is 56. Actor Grayson Mccouch (MIH-KOOCH’) is 55. Rock singer SA Martinez (311) is 54. Actor Winona Ryder is 52. Actor Tracee Ellis Ross is 51. Actor Gabrielle Union is 51.