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).
"Let's all be careful out there!"
