TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – OCT 29
539 BC King Cyrus “the Great” of Persia marches into Babylon, freeing Jewish captives and allowing them to return home
1618 Sir Walter Raleigh is executed. After the death of Queen Elizabeth, Raleigh’s enemies spread rumors that he was opposed the accession of King James.
1682 William Penn landed at what is now Chester, PA. He was the founder of Pennsylvania.
1863 The International Committee of the Red Cross was founded.
1901 Leon Czolgosz is electrocuted for the assassination of US President William McKinley. Czolgosz, an anarchist, shot McKinley on September 6 during a public reception at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, N.Y. Despite early hopes of recovery, McKinley died September 14, in Buffalo, NY.
1929 Black Tuesday–the most catastrophic day in stock market history, the herald of the Great Depression. 16 million shares were sold at declining prices. By mid-November $30 billion of the $80 billion worth of stocks listed in September will have been wiped out.
1940 The first peacetime military draft began in the U.S.
1948 A poison cloud of deadly smog settles on Donora Pennsylvania causing the deaths of 19 and hospitalization of 50, the poison in the cloud was caused by a local company which was smelting Zinc causing it to combine with the smog.
1956 Israel invaded the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula during the Suez Canal crisis.
1960 Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) won his first professional fight.
1969 The U.S. Supreme Court orders immediate desegregation, superseding the previous “with all deliberate speed” ruling.
1969 First computer-to-computer link; the link is accomplished through ARPANET, forerunner of the Internet.
1972 Palestinian guerrillas kill an airport employee and hijack a plane, carrying 27 passengers, to Cuba. They force West Germany to release 3 terrorists who were involved in the Munich Massacre.
1974 U.S. President Gerald Ford signed a new law forbidding discrimination in credit applications on the basis of sex or marital status
1990 The U.N. Security Council voted to hold Saddam Hussein’s regime liable for human rights abuses and war damages during its occupation of Kuwait.
1998 John Glenn, at age 77, becomes the oldest person to go into outer space. He is part of the crew of Space Shuttle Discovery, STS-95.
2004 For the first time, Osama bin Laden admits direct responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US; his comments are part of a video broadcast by the Al Jazeera network.
2005 Three terrorist bombs explode in crowded marketplace bazaars within minutes of each other, killing at least 61 people.
2012 Hurricane Sandy devastates much of the East Coast of the US; nearly 300 die directly or indirectly from the storm.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
