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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

OCTOBER 29TH

Today is Wednesday, Oct. 29, the 303rd day of 2008.
There are 63 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

  • On Oct. 29, 1929, "Black Tuesday" descended upon 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.
  • In 1901, President McKinley's assassin, Leon Czolgosz, was electrocuted.
  • In 1923, the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed.
  • In 1940, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson drew the first number — 158 — in America's first peacetime military draft.
  • In 1956, "The Huntley-Brinkley Report" premiered as NBC's nightly television newscast, replacing "The Camel News Caravan."
  • In 1956, during the Suez Canal crisis, Israel invaded Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
  • In 1966, the National Organization for Women was formally organized during a conference in Washington.
  • In 1967, Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, closed after six months.
  • In 1979, on the 50th anniversary of the great stock market crash, anti-nuclear protesters tried but failed to shut down the New York Stock Exchange.
  • In 1994, a gunman fired more than two dozen shots from a semiautomatic rifle at the White House. (Francisco Martin Duran was later convicted of trying to assassinate President Clinton and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.)

Ten years ago:
  • 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.
  • The government cleared the powerful drug tamoxifen as a way for healthy women at very high risk of breast cancer to cut their odds of getting a tumor.
  • South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission condemned both apartheid and violence committed by the African National Congress.
  • Sixty-three people were killed when fire broke out during a disco party in Goteborg, Sweden.

Five years ago:
  • International organizations continued their exodus from Iraq in the wake of car bombings in the capital and attacks against coalition troops.
  • A powerful geomagnetic storm walloped the Earth, knocking out some airline communications but apparently causing no large power outages or other major problems.
  • Opera star Franco Corelli died in Milan, Italy, at age 82.

One year ago:
  • A suicide bomber rode his bicycle into a crowd of police recruits in Baqouba, Iraq, killing some 30 people.
  • Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced he had prostate cancer, but would continue to perform his duties.
  • Authorities in Chad charged six French charity workers with kidnapping after they tried to put 103 children on a plane to France, claiming they were orphans from Sudan's conflict-wracked Darfur region. (The charity workers were later convicted, jailed for several months, then pardoned.)
  • A Moscow court sentenced Alexander Pichushkin, convicted of 48 murders, to life imprisonment, ending one of Russia's worst serial killer cases.

Today's Birthdays:
  • Writer-producer Dominick Dunne is 83.
  • Bluegrass singer-musician Sonny Osborne (The Osborne Brothers) is 71.
  • Country singer Lee Clayton is 66.
  • Rock musician Denny Laine is 64.
  • Singer Melba Moore is 63.
  • Musician Peter Green is 62.
  • Actor Richard Dreyfuss is 61.
  • Actress Kate Jackson is 60.
  • Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is 57.
  • Actor Dan Castellaneta ("The Simpsons") is 51.
  • Country musician Steve Kellough (Wild Horses) is 51.
  • Comic strip artist Tom Wilson ("Ziggy") is 51.
  • Singer Randy Jackson is 47.
  • Rock musician Peter Timmins (Cowboy Junkies) is 43.
  • Actress Joely Fisher is 41.
  • Rapper Paris is 41. Actor Rufus Sewell is 41.
  • Rock singer SA Martinez (311) is 39.
  • Musician Toby Smith is 38.
  • Actress Winona Ryder is 37.
  • Actress Tracee Ellis Ross is 36.
  • Actor Trevor Lissauer is 35.
  • Actress Gabrielle Union is 35.
  • Actress Milena Govich is 32.
  • Actor Brendan Fehr is 31.
  • Actor Ben Foster is 28.
  • Rock musician Chris Baio (Vampire Weekend) is 24.

Thought for Today:
"Moral indignation is in most cases 2 percent moral, 48 percent indignation, and 50 percent envy."
Vittorio De Sica, Italian movie director (1901-1974).


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