Post by farmgal on Oct 28, 2012 22:40:15 GMT -5
October 29 is the 303rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar.
There are 63 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days left until November 06, 2012: 9
Countdown until Obama leaves Office
www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
1390 First trial for witchcraft in Paris leading to the death of three people.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchcraft_trials
1618 Sir Walter Raleigh executed. Sir Walter Raleigh, English adventurer, writer, and favorite courtier of Queen Elizabeth I, is beheaded in London, under a sentence brought against him 15 years earlier for conspiracy against King James I.
During Elizabeth's reign, Raleigh organized three major expeditions to America, including the first English settlement in America, in 1587¡ªthe ill-fated Roanoke settlement located in present-day North Carolina. Raleigh later fell out of favor with Elizabeth after she learned of his secret marriage to Bessy Throckmorton, one of her maids-of-honor, and he was imprisoned with his wife in the Tower of London. After buying his freedom, Raleigh married Bessy and distanced himself from the jealous English queen.
After Elizabeth died in 1603, Raleigh was implicated as a foe of King James I and imprisoned with a death sentence. The death sentence was later commuted, and in 1616 Raleigh was freed to lead an expedition to the New World, this time to establish a gold mine in the Orinoco River region of South America. However, the expedition was a failure, and when Raleigh returned to England the death sentence of 1603 was invoked against him.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Raleigh
1675 Leibniz makes the first use of the long s as a symbol of the integral in calculus.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz
1682 William Penn lands in what will become Pennsylvania. Penn is known as a famous Quaker and for his 'Great Treaty' with the Delaware. The Ship Welcome sailed from Deal, England, departing August 31, 1682, and arrived at the mouth of the Delaware River (New Castle) on October 27, 1682, later anchoring at Chester, Pennsylvania. William Penn and friends then went to Philadelphia.
1777 Hancock resigns as president of Congress. John Hancock resigns his position as president of the Continental Congress, due to a prolonged illness, on this day in 1777. Hancock was the first member of the Continental Congress to sign the Declaration of Independence and is perhaps best known for his bold signature on the ground-breaking document.
First elected to the Continental Congress in 1774 as a delegate from Massachusetts, Hancock became its president upon the resignation of Peyton Randolph in May 1775. During his tenure as president, Hancock presided over some of the most historic moments of the American Revolution, culminating in the signing of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776.
After resigning his position as president, Hancock returned to his home state of Massachusetts, where he continued his work in public service. After helping to establish the state's first constitution, Hancock was elected first governor of the commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1780 and served for five years. He declined to run for reelection in 1785, but returned after a two-year absence and was elected governor for a second time in 1787. He held the position until his death in 1793.
Hancock will forever be remembered for his bold and defiant signature on the Declaration of Independence, but "bold" and "defiant" could also describe the way he lived. The wealthiest colonist in New England, Hancock risked losing everything he had for the cause of American independence. Nothing better exemplifies Hancock's defiance than the first words he spoke after signing the Declaration of Independence. In response to the bounty the British had placed on the heads of prominent revolutionary leaders, Hancock replied, "The British ministry can read that name without spectacles; let them double their reward."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hancock
1792 Mount Hood (Oregon) is named after the British naval officer Alexander Arthur Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton who spotted the mountain near the mouth of the Willamette River.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hood
1811 The first Ohio River steamboat left Pittsburgh for New Orleans.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_River#History
Former Kansas Territorial Governor James W. Denver visited his namesake city in 1875 and in 1882.
1858 The first store opens in the frontier town of Denver, Colorado. On this day in 1858, the first store opens in a small frontier town in Colorado Territory that a month later will take the name of Denver in a shameless ploy to curry favor with Kansas Territorial Gover nor James W. Denver.
The brainchild of a town promoter and real estate salesman from Kansas named William H. Larimer Jr., Denver and its first store were created to serve the miners working the placer gold deposits discove red a year before at the confluence of Cheery Creek and the South Platte River. By 1859, tens of thousands of gold seekers had flooded into the area, but by then the placer deposits were already playing out and most miners quickly departed for home or headed west into the mountains in search of richer lodes.
As a result, by 1860, Larimer's new town had almost failed before it had even really started. Although it was still centrally located for servicing the mining camps along the Rocky Mountain Front Range, Denver had neither the rail or water transportation routes needed to bring in goods cheaply. Even the tran scontinental Union Pacific railroad, which opened in 1869, didn't stop at Denver initially. In 1870, Denver began to overcome its geographical isolation with the arrival of the Kansas Pacific Railroad from the East and the completion of the 105-mile Denver Pacific Railway joining Denver to the Union Pacific line at Cheyenne. Other lines began to connect Denver to the booming mining regions in the Rockies, and by the mid-1870s, the city was thriving as a railroad hub and center of the western mining industry.
By 1890, Denver had a popu lation of more than 106,000, making it the 26th largest urban area in the nation and earning it the nickname, the "Queen City of the Plains." However, the Silver Panic of 1893 brought the boom to an abrupt end, though it was partially revived a year later by the gold discoveries on Cripple Creek. Although the growing significance of farming and ranching helped moderate its ups and downs by decreasing the city's dependency on mining, this cyclical pattern of economic boom and bust would continue to dominate Denver, and many other western cities, throughout much of the 20th century.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver,_Colorado#History
1863 International Committee of the Red Cross founded. In October (26-29) 1863, the international conference organized by the committee was held in Geneva to develop possible measures to improve medical services on the battle field. The conference was attended by 36 individuals: eighteen official delegates from national governments, six delegates from other non-governmental organizations, seven non-official foreign delegates, and the five members of the International Committee.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Committee_of_the_Red_Cross
1863 American Civil War: Battle of Wauhatchie: Forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant repel a Confederate attack led by General James Longstreet. Union forces thus open a supply line into Chattanooga, Tennessee.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wauhatchie
1869 Ernest Orlando Sellers, American Baptist musician. At various times the song evangelist for R.A. Torrey, Gipsy Smith, A.C. Dixon and J. Wilbur Chapman, Sellers is remembered today for his two original hymns: "Thy Word Have I Hid in My Heart" and "Wonderful, Wonderful Jesus."
www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/t/h/y/thywhihh.htm
www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/s/e/l/sellers_eo.htm
1872 The all-metal windmill was patented (J.S. Risdon, Genoa, Ill.).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_O._Perry
Ticker tape parade for presidential candidate Richard Nixon in 1960, showing the classic streams of ticker tape.
1886 The first ticker-tape parade takes place in New York City when office workers spontaneously throw ticker tape into the streets as the Statue of Liberty is dedicated.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticker_tape_parade
1889 New York City missions pioneer Albert B. Simpson, 46, incorporated the International Missionary Alliance. Combined in 1897 with a group formerly also organized by Simpson, it became the Christian and Missionary Alliance, one of the most missions-minded denominations in modern American Protestantism.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_B._Simpson
1901 McKinley assassin is executed. On this day in 1901, President William McKinley's assassin, Leon Czolgosz, is executed in the electric chair at Auburn Prison in New York. Czolgosz had shot McKinley on September 6, 1901; the president succumbed to his wounds eight days later.
McKinley was shaking hands in a long reception line at the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York, when a 28-year-old anarchist named Leon Czolgosz approached him with a gun concealed in a handkerchief in his right hand. McKinley, perhaps assuming the handkerchief was an attempt by Czolgosz to hide a physical defect, kindly reached for the man's left hand to shake. Czolgosz moved in close to the president and fired two shots into McKinley's chest. The president reportedly rose slightly on his toes before collapsing forward, saying "be careful how you tell my wife." Czolgosz was attempting to fire a third bullet into the stricken president when aides wrestled him to the ground.
McKinley suffered one superficial wound to the sternum and another bullet dangerously entered his abdomen. He was rushed into surgery and seemed to be on the mend by September 12. Later that day, however, the president's condition worsened rapidly and, on September 14, McKinley died from gangrene that had remained undetected in the internal wound. According to witnesses, McKinley's last words were those of the hymn "Nearer My God to Thee." Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as president immediately following McKinley's death.
Czolgosz, a Polish immigrant, grew up in Detroit and had worked as a child laborer in a steel mill. As a young adult, he gravitated toward socialist and anarchist ideology. He claimed to have killed McKinley because the president was the head of what Czolgosz thought was a corrupt government. The unrepentant killer's last words were 'I killed the president because he was the enemy of the good people "the working people."' His electrocution was allegedly filmed by Thomas Edison.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Czolgosz
1901 In Amherst, Massachusetts nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine. Born Honora Kelley, was an American serial killer. She confessed to 31 murders in 1901. She is quoted as saying that her ambition was "to have killed more people — helpless people — than any other man or woman who ever lived...".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Toppan
1904 First intercity trucking service (Colorado City & Snyder, Texas)
1915 Jane Addams writes to Woodrow Wilson about dangers of preparing for war. On October 29, 1915, Jane Addams, a leading American social activist, writes to United States President Woodrow Wilson, warning him of the potential dangers of readying the country to enter the First World War.
When World War I broke out in the summer of 1914, President Wilson accurately reflected the isolationist view of the majority of Americans when he called the war a cause "with which we have nothing to do, whose causes cannot touch us." In the wake of the German sinking of the British passenger ship Lusitania in May 1915 which left 1,201 people dead, including 128 Americans public opinion, along with U.S. governmental policy, began to turn ever more steadily towards entrance into the war against the Central Powers. Before the end of that year, Wilson had issued a call to improve U.S. military preparedness, including a spike in the production of armaments and a twofold increase in the size of the army.
Addams, the celebrated founder of Hull House, a social settlement that served as a welfare agency for needy families in Chicago, had also become a leading international voice for peace and the chairwoman of the Women's Peace Party. In April 1915, she attended the International Congress of Women at The Hague in the Netherlands, an assemblage of women from around the world, including the belligerent nations, who advocated a non-violent method of conflict resolution. Disturbed by Wilson's call for increased military preparedness, Addams wrote to the president on October 29 of that year in the name of the Women¡'s Peace Party.
Above all, Addams expressed concern that the rich, powerful U.S. was setting an example for other, poorer nations, who would feel compelled to increase their own preparedness and move the world ever further from the ideal of peace and international cooperation. "At this crisis of the world, to establish a "citizen soldiery" and enormously to increase our fighting equipment would inevitably make all other nations fear instead of trust us," Adams argued. "It has been the proud hope of American citizens who love their kind, a hope nobly expressed in some of your own messages, that to the United States might be granted the unique privilege not only of helping the war-worn world to a lasting peace, but of aiding toward a gradual and proportional lessening of that vast burden of armament which has crushed to poverty the people of the old world."
Wilson assured Addams at the time that he had no intention of leading the U.S. into war; he was in fact re-elected that November on the slogan "He Kept Us Out of War." By the following spring, however, events¡ªincluding continued German aggression at sea and an intercepted telegram from the German foreign office proposing an alliance between Germany and Mexico in the case of war with the U.S.¡ªhad seemingly conspired to change his mind and to turn the tide of American public opinion more fully toward intervention against the Central Powers. On April 2, 1917, Wilson delivered his war message to Congress; the U.S. formally entered World War I four days later.
Addams continued her work with the Women¡¯s Peace Party, which in 1919 became the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). As the WILPF's first president, she served until 1929; she also assisted Herbert Hoover, head of the American Relief Administration, with that organization's efforts to provide food supplies for millions in poverty-stricken post-war Europe. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, Addams died four years later; her funeral was held in the courtyard of Hull House.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Addams
1917 The temperature at Denver, CO, dipped to zero, and at Soda Butte, WY, the mercury plunged to 33 degrees below zero, a U.S. record for the month of October. (David Ludlum)
1919 The Apostolic Christian Association was incorporated in Atlanta, Georgia. It later merged with what is now the International Pentecostal Church of Christ, headquartered in London, Ohio
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Pentecostal_Church_of_Christ
1921 The Link River Dam, a part of the Klamath Reclamation Project, is completed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_River_Dam
1921 Second trial of Sacco and Vanzetti in USA.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacco_and_Vanzetti
1921 The Harvard University football team loses to Centre College, ending a 25 game winning streak. This is considered one of the biggest upsets in college football.
1922 The King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, appoints Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Emmanuel_III_of_Italy
"Charleston" as danced in It's a Wonderful Life1923 "Runnin' Wild" (introducing the Charleston) opens on Broadway
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_(dance)
1929 Stock market crashes. Black Tuesday hits Wall Street as investors trade 16,410,030 shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors, and stock tickers ran hours behind because the machinery could not handle the tremendous volume of trading. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression.
During the 1920s, the U.S. stock market underwent rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August 1929, a period of wild speculation. By then, production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value. Among the other causes of the eventual market collapse were low wages, the proliferation of debt, a weak agriculture, and an excess of large bank loans that could not be liquidated.
Stock prices began to decline in September and early October 1929, and on October 18 the fall began. Panic set in, and on October 24¡ªBlack Thursday¡ªa record 12,894,650 shares were traded. Investment companies and leading bankers attempted to stabilize the market by buying up great blocks of stock, producing a moderate rally on Friday. On Monday, however, the storm broke anew, and the market went into free fall. Black Monday was followed by Black Tuesday, in which stock prices collapsed completely.
After October 29, 1929, stock prices had nowhere to go but up, so there was considerable recovery during succeeding weeks. Overall, however, prices continued to drop as the United States slumped into the Great Depression, and by 1932 stocks were worth only about 20 percent of their value in the summer of 1929. The stock market crash of 1929 was not the sole cause of the Great Depression, but it did act to accelerate the global economic collapse of which it was also a symptom. By 1933, nearly half of America's banks had failed, and unemployment was approaching 15 million people, or 30 percent of the workforce. It would take World War II, and the massive level of armaments production taken on by the United States, to finally bring the country out of the Depression after a decade of suffering.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Tuesday
1930 The tune, "It Must Be True," was recorded on Victor by Bing Crosby
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_Crosby
1940 First peacetime military draft in US history. The first peacetime conscription came with the Selective Service Act of 1940, which established the Selective Service System as an independent agency. The duration of service was originally twelve months. It was expanded to eighteen months in 1941. When the United States entered World War II, service was required until six months after the end of the war. The first draft number ever picked for World War II was 158, picked by a blindfolded Henry L. Stimson out of a goldfish bowl.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_States#Interwar
1941 Holocaust: In the Kaunas Ghetto over 10,000 Jews are shot by German occupiers at the Ninth Fort, a massacre known as the "Great Action".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaunas_Ghetto
1942 The British protest against the persecution of Jews.On this day in 1942, leading British clergymen and political figures hold a public meeting to register their outrage over the persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany.
In a message sent to the meeting, Prime Minister Winston Churchill summed up the sentiments of all present: "The systematic cruelties to which the Jewish people-men, women, and children-have been exposed under the Nazi regime are amongst the most terrible events of history, and place an indelible stain upon all who perpetrate and instigate them. Free men and women," Churchill continued, "denounce these vile crimes, and when this world struggle ends with the enthronement of human rights, racial persecution will be ended."
The very next day, the power of protest over cruelty was made evident elsewhere in Europe. When Gestapo officers in Brussels removed more than 100 Jewish children from a children's home for deportation, staff members refused to leave the sides of their young charges. Both the staff and the children were removed to a deportation camp set up in Malines. Protests rained down on the Germans, who had occupied the nation for more than two years, including one lodged by the Belgian secretary-general of the Ministry of Justice. The children and staff were returned to the home.
1942 The Alaska highway was opened to traffic. At mile 1202, Beaver Creek , the final connection was completed here when the 97th Engineers met the 18th Engineers. The bombing of Pearl Harbor in Dec 1941 spurred construction of the Alaska Highway. Alaska was considered vulnerable to a Japanese invasion, and the highway was deemed a military necessity. Construction began in Mar 1942, and was completed 8 months later. Literally bulldozed through the wilderness, road conditions along the Alcan were horrific; 90 degree turns and 25 percent grades were not uncommon. Rain and truck traffic turned sections of the road into an impassable mire. The highway was improved in 1943. The 1,523 mile highway officially opened to the public in 1948.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Highway
1942 A tornado struck the town of Berryville in northwest Arkansas killing 20 persons and causing half a million dollars damage. (David Ludlum)
B.W.T. van Slobbe, the Mayor of Breda, giving a welcome speech to the Polish 1st Armoured Division
1944 The city of Breda in the Netherlands is liberated by 1st Polish Armoured Division.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breda#World_War_II
1945 The first ball point pen in the U.S. went on sale at Gimbels Department Stores for $12.95. In June, 1945, Chicago businessman Milton Reynolds, in Buenos Aires on unrelated business, saw the Biro pen in a store, recognized the pen¡¯s sales potential and bought a few as samples. Reynolds returned to America and started manufacturing. He copied the product in four months, (ignoring the patent rights of the Argentine manufacturer, Eversharp Company. On the first day of sale, his Reynolds' Rocket pen was immediately successful; $100,000 worth are sold its first day on the market). The ballpoint pen became a fad. However, it leaked, skipped and was unreliable. By 1948, the price dropped to less than 50 cents. Reynolds' company failed in 1951.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_point_pen
1946 "Sky King" debuts on CBS radio. Sky King was sponsored by Peter Pan Peanut Butter,made by Derby Foods Inc., a subsidary of Swift & Company.The first 15 min.radio program was radio program was aired Monday , October 29,1946 transcribed from Chicago on WGN,from 5:15 to 5:30 pm. The show was such a smashing success that the program was increased to a full half hour with each one a complete adventure.The rest of childrens radio programs such as Superman,Captain Midnight and Tom Mix, all were quick to follow suit."Sky King" starred Jack Lester, then Earl Nightingale, and finally, Roy Engel, as Sky.
1947 A forest fire at Concord, N.H. was drenched with rain produced by seeding cumulus clouds with dry ice, the first such event in the U.S. The rain-making planes were flown over the burning area by seeders from the General Electric Co. of Schnectady, N.Y. Part of Project Cirrus, the experimental mission was a joint weather research program of the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Office of Naval Research. However, natural rainfall followed, caused by natural conditions, so it was not possible to measure the artificial rainfall.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding
1948 Killer smog claims elderly victims. Killer smog continues to hover over Donora, Pennsylvania, on this day in 1948. Over a five-day period, the smog killed about 20 people and made thousands more seriously ill.
Donora was a town of 14,000 people on the Monongahela River in a valley surrounded by hills. The town was home to steel mills and a zinc smelting plant that had released excessive amounts of sulphuric acid, carbon monoxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere for years prior to the disaster. During the 1920s, the owner of the zinc plant, Zinc Works, paid off local residents for damages caused by the pollution. Still, there was little or no regulation of the air pollution caused by the industries of Donora.
Beginning sometime on October 26, weather conditions in the valley brought a heavy fog into Donora. This fog appears to have trapped the airborne pollutants emitted from the zinc smelting plant and steel mills close to the ground, where they were inhaled by the local residents. Soon, a wave of calls came in to area hospitals and physicians. Dr. William Rongaus, the head of the local Board of Health, suggested that all residents with pre-existing respiratory problems leave town immediately. However, 11 people, all elderly and with heart problems or asthma, were already dead.
Most residents then attempted to evacuate, but the heavy smog and increased traffic made leaving difficult. Thousands flooded the hospitals when they experienced difficulty breathing. It was not until October 31 that Zinc Works shut down operations. Later that day, rain fell on Donora and dispersed the pollutants. By that time, another nine people had already perished.
The Donora smog disaster received national attention when it was reported by Walter Winchell on his radio show. In the aftermath, air pollution finally became a matter of public concern; the incident led to the passage of 1955 Clean Air Act. The Donora Zinc Works shuttered operations in 1957.
Years later, a local high-school student's research and activism led the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission to place a commemorative plaque in Donora honoring the victims of the killer smog.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Donora_smog
1949 "That Lucky Old Sun" by Frankie Laine topped the charts. "That's My Desire" hit number four in the American charts in 1947, and Laine re-entered the Top Ten in 1948 with "Shine." He hit the big time the following year, with two huge number one hits, "That Lucky Old Sun" and "Mule Train." Another chart-topper, 1950's "The Cry of the Wild Goose," was his last for Mercury, and he signed with Columbia just one year later.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Laine
1953 BCPA Flight 304 DC-6 crashes near San Francisco, California. Pianist William Kapell is among the 19 killed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCPA_Flight_304
1955 Warner Brothers copyright registered "A Rebel without a Cause." The classic film about alienated and rebellious youth that made James Dean an indelible icon. It also served as a springboard for the acting careers of its two other stars Natalie Wood (in her first non-child 'adult' role) and unknown 16 year-old actor Sal Mineo. It affords a classic, semi-glamorized portrait of three troubled, frustrated, anguished, and identity-seeking teenagers - all outsiders, alienated and outcast from the world and values of parents and adults, who attain maturity through rebellion and tragic circumstances.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Without_a_Cause
1955 "Autumn Leaves" by Roger Williams topped the charts. After releasing a few singles, Williams had his first hit with the arpeggio-laden "Autumn Leaves" in 1955. The single reached number one on the U.S. charts and began a streak of 22 hit singles that ran through 1969; he had two other Top Ten hits, "Near You" in 1958 and "Born Free" in 1966. Williams was equally successful on the album charts, racking up a total of 38 hit records between 1956 and 1972.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn_Leaves_(song)
1956 A violent tornado, or series of tornadoes, moved along a path more than 100 miles in length from south of North Platte NE into Rock County NE. It was an unusually late occurence so far north and west in the U.S. for such a storm. (The Weather Channel)
1956 John Cameron Swayze and "The Camel News Caravan" replaced by Huntley-Brinkley
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cameron_Swayze
1957 Israel's prime minister David Ben Gurion and five of his ministers are injured when a hand grenade is tossed into Israel's parliament, the Knesset.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion
1958 The first coronary angiogram was performed by Dr. F. Mason Sones, Jr. (1919-1985), a pediatric cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic. This is a diagnostic x-ray procedure designed to visualize blockages of the small nutrient arteries of the heart. Sones discovered the technique by accidental. In studies on dog's hearts, dye injected in coronary arteries caused heart fibrillation, and therefore had never been used on humans. While attempting to dye a patient's diseased vessels by injecting contrast material only near their openings, on one occasion about 30 cc of the dye went into the patient's coronary artery. Expected heart fibrillation (requiring the opening of the patient's chest to treat) did not occur. Thus, lower amounts of dye could in fact be used safely.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronary_angiogram
1959 The first corporation to use closed-circuit television was General Mills of Minneapolis, MN, beaming simultaneous meetings in seven cities
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television
1960 Muhammad Ali's (Cassius Clay's) first professional fight, beats Tunney Hunsaker in 6. Muhammad Ali AKA Cassius Clay had conquered Rome, but his professional debut was not designed to provide the Olympic champion with an easy knock-over first time out. Tunney Hunsaker was police chief of Fayetteville, West Virginia and a seasoned pro boxer on the side. Clay hammered out a six-round decision, sticking and moving but without the verve he had shown in his ascent to the summit of the amateur ranks.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali
1964 Star of India & other jewels are stolen in NY. On October 29, 1964, the famous golf-ball-sized stone was stolen, along with several other stones including the Eagle Diamond and the de Long Ruby. The thieves unlocked a bathroom window during museum open hours, climbed in that night, found that the sapphire was the only gem in the collection protected by an alarm -- and the battery for that was dead. So they raked up the stones, and fled the same way they came in. The stones were valued at more than $400,000. Within two days, the notorious cat burglar, smuggler, and one-time surfing champion Jack Murphy was arrested along with two accomplices, later receiving a three-year sentence. The uninsured Star of India was recovered in a locker in a Miami bus station.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_of_India_(gem)
1966 National Organization For Women (NOW) is founded.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Organization_for_Women
1969 The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
1970 Neil Diamond received a gold record for "Cracklin' Rosie." Diamond's single, "Cracklin' Rosie" (famously referring to the cheap wine Cracklin' Rose), which was released in July and became his biggest hit yet, topping the charts in October, when it was certified as his third gold single. (It eventually went platinum). Also released in July 1970 was the live album Gold, which had been recorded in March at the Troubadour nightclub in Los Angeles. It containing new versions of "Solitary Man," "Cherry, Cherry," "Kentucky Woman," and "Thank the Lord for the Night Time."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Diamond
1971 The first successful use of electricity to repair a bone fracture is reported by surgeons at the University of Pennsylvania. Electrical currents have been used to heal bone since the mid-1800s, and the effect of electrical stimulation on bone has been long studied and well documented.When human bone is bent or broken, it generates an electrical charge ("On the Piezoelectric Effect of Bone", Fukada and Yasuda, 1957). This low level electrical charge stimulates the body's internal repair mechanism.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsed_electromagnetic_field_therapy
1977 Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life," goes #1 & stays #1 for 10 weeks. At first, this was going to be sung by a jingle singer named Kasey Cisyk, and she recorded the original version that was used in the film. For over a year, no movie studio would release the film and no record company would release the song. When the movie finally got picked up, it was time to record the song as a single, and Brooks went with Debbie Boone instead of Cisyk. This won the 1977 Grammy for Song Of The Year. Boone also won that year for Best New Artist. It was by far the biggest hit of 1977. It was #1 for 10 weeks in the US.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Boone
1980 Demonstration flight of a secretly modified C-130 for an Iran hostage crisis rescue attempt ends in crash landing at Eglin Air Force Base's Duke Field, Florida leading to cancellation of Operation Credible Sport.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Credible_Sport
1980 Mark David Chapman, John Lennon's murderer, leaves for New York from his home in Hawaii.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_David_Chapman
1981 Loretta Lynn received a gold record for her album, "Greatest Hits, Vol. 2." All of the attention surrounding the movie Coal Miner's Daughter made Loretta Lynn a household name with the American mainstream. Although she continued to be a popular concert attraction throughout the '80s, she wasn't able to continue her domination of the country charts. "I Lie," her last Top Ten single, arrived in early 1982, while her last Top 40 single, "Heart Don't Do This to Me," was in 1985.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_Lynn
1983 "Islands in the Stream" by Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton topped the charts. "Islands in the Stream" was a 1983 hit country music single for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, written by the Bee Gees (whose vocals also appear on the record). It was the first single from Rogers' album Eyes That See in the Dark and the second pop number-one for both Rogers and Parton (Rogers having been there with 1980's "Lady" and Parton with 1981's "9 to 5").
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islands_in_the_Stream
1987 Severe thunderstorms in Arizona produced wind gusts to 86 mph at the Glendale Airport near Phoenix, baseball size hail and 70 mph winds at Wickenburg, and up to an inch of rain in fifteen minutes in Yavapai County and northwest Maricopa County. Arizona Public Service alone reported 2.5 million dollars damage from the storms. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1987 Thomas Hearns wins unprecidented 4th different weight boxing title
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hearns
1988 Wintry weather prevailed in the Upper Midwest. South Bend, IN, equalled their record for October with a morning low of 23 degrees. International Falls MN reported a record low of 11 degrees in the morning, then dipped down to 8 degrees above zero late in the evening. (The National Weather Summary)
1988 Jim Elliott (US) begins 24-hr paced outdoor race for 548.9 mi
1989 Thunderstorms developing along a cold front produced severe weather in Oklahoma and north central Texas during the late afternoon and evening hours. Thunderstorms in Oklahoma produced weak tornadoes near Snyder and Davidson, and produced hail two inches in diameter at Altus. Large hail damaged 60 to 80 percent of the cotton crop in Tillman County OK. Nine cities in the northeastern U.S. reported record high temperatures for the date as readings warmed into the 70s. For Marquette MI it marked their fifth straight day of record warmth. Arctic cold invaded the western U.S. Lows of 7 degrees at Alamosa CO and 9 degrees at Elko NV were records for the date. (The National Weather Summary)
1991 Space probe Galileo become the first human object to fly past an asteroid, Gaspra, making its closest approach at a distance of 1,604 km, passing at a speed of 8 km/sec (5 mi/sec). The encounter provided much data, including 150 images, which showed Gaspra has numerous craters indicating it has suffered numerous collisions since its formation. Gaspra is about 20-km long and orbits the Sun in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Gaspra, asteroid 951, was discovered by Ukrainian astronomer Grigoriy N. Neujamin (1916) who named it after a Black Sea retreat. In the photograph (left), subtle color variations have been exaggerated by NASA to highlight changes in reflectivity, surface structure and composition.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaspra_(asteroid)
1994 Francisco Martin Duran fires over two dozen shots at the White House (Duran is later convicted of trying to kill US President Bill Clinton).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Martin_Duran
1998 U.S. astronaut John Glenn was launched into space aboard Spac Shuttle Discovery. In 1962, Glenn first made history as the first American to orbit the Earth, strapped into a nine-by-seven-foot capsule. Now at age 77, and a U.S. Senator from Ohio, Glenn was a member of the STS-95 crew, serving as a Payload Specialist, aboard the Discovery. He carried out studies on the commonalities between the effects of space flight and aging. His microgravity research results relate to product-oriented commercial applications in such diverse fields as medical, agriculture and manufacturing. The 9-day mission returned on 7 Nov 1998, after 134 Earth orbits, traveling 3.6 million miles in 213-hr 44-min. His original flight had lasted about 5 hours.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glenn
1998 ATSC HDTV broadcasting in the United States is inaugurated with the launch of STS-95 space shuttle mission.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Television_Systems_Committee_standards
2002 Ho Chi Minh City ITC Inferno, a fire destroys a luxurious department store where 1500 people shopping. Over 60 people died and over 100 are missing. It is the deadliest disaster in Vietnam during peacetime.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_City_ITC_Inferno
2004 The Arabic news network Al Jazeera broadcasts an excerpt from a video of Osama bin Laden in which the terrorist leader first admits direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks and references the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden
2008 Delta Air Lines merges with Northwest Airlines, creating the world's largest airline and reducing the number of US legacy carriers to 5.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Air_Lines#History
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines#Merger_with_Delta_Air_Lines
www.todayinsci.com/10/10_29.htm
daysuntil.com/Election-Day/index.html
www.weatherforyou.com/cgi-bin/weather_history/today2S.pl
www.christianhistorytimeline.com/lives_events/birthday/index.php
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/john-glenn-returns-to-space
www.amug.org/~jpaul/oct29.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_29
www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_29_(Eastern_Orthodox_liturgics)
There are 63 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days left until November 06, 2012: 9
Countdown until Obama leaves Office
www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
1390 First trial for witchcraft in Paris leading to the death of three people.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchcraft_trials
1618 Sir Walter Raleigh executed. Sir Walter Raleigh, English adventurer, writer, and favorite courtier of Queen Elizabeth I, is beheaded in London, under a sentence brought against him 15 years earlier for conspiracy against King James I.
During Elizabeth's reign, Raleigh organized three major expeditions to America, including the first English settlement in America, in 1587¡ªthe ill-fated Roanoke settlement located in present-day North Carolina. Raleigh later fell out of favor with Elizabeth after she learned of his secret marriage to Bessy Throckmorton, one of her maids-of-honor, and he was imprisoned with his wife in the Tower of London. After buying his freedom, Raleigh married Bessy and distanced himself from the jealous English queen.
After Elizabeth died in 1603, Raleigh was implicated as a foe of King James I and imprisoned with a death sentence. The death sentence was later commuted, and in 1616 Raleigh was freed to lead an expedition to the New World, this time to establish a gold mine in the Orinoco River region of South America. However, the expedition was a failure, and when Raleigh returned to England the death sentence of 1603 was invoked against him.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Raleigh
1675 Leibniz makes the first use of the long s as a symbol of the integral in calculus.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz
1682 William Penn lands in what will become Pennsylvania. Penn is known as a famous Quaker and for his 'Great Treaty' with the Delaware. The Ship Welcome sailed from Deal, England, departing August 31, 1682, and arrived at the mouth of the Delaware River (New Castle) on October 27, 1682, later anchoring at Chester, Pennsylvania. William Penn and friends then went to Philadelphia.
1777 Hancock resigns as president of Congress. John Hancock resigns his position as president of the Continental Congress, due to a prolonged illness, on this day in 1777. Hancock was the first member of the Continental Congress to sign the Declaration of Independence and is perhaps best known for his bold signature on the ground-breaking document.
First elected to the Continental Congress in 1774 as a delegate from Massachusetts, Hancock became its president upon the resignation of Peyton Randolph in May 1775. During his tenure as president, Hancock presided over some of the most historic moments of the American Revolution, culminating in the signing of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776.
After resigning his position as president, Hancock returned to his home state of Massachusetts, where he continued his work in public service. After helping to establish the state's first constitution, Hancock was elected first governor of the commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1780 and served for five years. He declined to run for reelection in 1785, but returned after a two-year absence and was elected governor for a second time in 1787. He held the position until his death in 1793.
Hancock will forever be remembered for his bold and defiant signature on the Declaration of Independence, but "bold" and "defiant" could also describe the way he lived. The wealthiest colonist in New England, Hancock risked losing everything he had for the cause of American independence. Nothing better exemplifies Hancock's defiance than the first words he spoke after signing the Declaration of Independence. In response to the bounty the British had placed on the heads of prominent revolutionary leaders, Hancock replied, "The British ministry can read that name without spectacles; let them double their reward."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hancock
1792 Mount Hood (Oregon) is named after the British naval officer Alexander Arthur Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton who spotted the mountain near the mouth of the Willamette River.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hood
1811 The first Ohio River steamboat left Pittsburgh for New Orleans.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_River#History
Former Kansas Territorial Governor James W. Denver visited his namesake city in 1875 and in 1882.
1858 The first store opens in the frontier town of Denver, Colorado. On this day in 1858, the first store opens in a small frontier town in Colorado Territory that a month later will take the name of Denver in a shameless ploy to curry favor with Kansas Territorial Gover nor James W. Denver.
The brainchild of a town promoter and real estate salesman from Kansas named William H. Larimer Jr., Denver and its first store were created to serve the miners working the placer gold deposits discove red a year before at the confluence of Cheery Creek and the South Platte River. By 1859, tens of thousands of gold seekers had flooded into the area, but by then the placer deposits were already playing out and most miners quickly departed for home or headed west into the mountains in search of richer lodes.
As a result, by 1860, Larimer's new town had almost failed before it had even really started. Although it was still centrally located for servicing the mining camps along the Rocky Mountain Front Range, Denver had neither the rail or water transportation routes needed to bring in goods cheaply. Even the tran scontinental Union Pacific railroad, which opened in 1869, didn't stop at Denver initially. In 1870, Denver began to overcome its geographical isolation with the arrival of the Kansas Pacific Railroad from the East and the completion of the 105-mile Denver Pacific Railway joining Denver to the Union Pacific line at Cheyenne. Other lines began to connect Denver to the booming mining regions in the Rockies, and by the mid-1870s, the city was thriving as a railroad hub and center of the western mining industry.
By 1890, Denver had a popu lation of more than 106,000, making it the 26th largest urban area in the nation and earning it the nickname, the "Queen City of the Plains." However, the Silver Panic of 1893 brought the boom to an abrupt end, though it was partially revived a year later by the gold discoveries on Cripple Creek. Although the growing significance of farming and ranching helped moderate its ups and downs by decreasing the city's dependency on mining, this cyclical pattern of economic boom and bust would continue to dominate Denver, and many other western cities, throughout much of the 20th century.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver,_Colorado#History
1863 International Committee of the Red Cross founded. In October (26-29) 1863, the international conference organized by the committee was held in Geneva to develop possible measures to improve medical services on the battle field. The conference was attended by 36 individuals: eighteen official delegates from national governments, six delegates from other non-governmental organizations, seven non-official foreign delegates, and the five members of the International Committee.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Committee_of_the_Red_Cross
1863 American Civil War: Battle of Wauhatchie: Forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant repel a Confederate attack led by General James Longstreet. Union forces thus open a supply line into Chattanooga, Tennessee.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wauhatchie
1869 Ernest Orlando Sellers, American Baptist musician. At various times the song evangelist for R.A. Torrey, Gipsy Smith, A.C. Dixon and J. Wilbur Chapman, Sellers is remembered today for his two original hymns: "Thy Word Have I Hid in My Heart" and "Wonderful, Wonderful Jesus."
www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/t/h/y/thywhihh.htm
www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/s/e/l/sellers_eo.htm
1872 The all-metal windmill was patented (J.S. Risdon, Genoa, Ill.).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_O._Perry
Ticker tape parade for presidential candidate Richard Nixon in 1960, showing the classic streams of ticker tape.
1886 The first ticker-tape parade takes place in New York City when office workers spontaneously throw ticker tape into the streets as the Statue of Liberty is dedicated.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticker_tape_parade
1889 New York City missions pioneer Albert B. Simpson, 46, incorporated the International Missionary Alliance. Combined in 1897 with a group formerly also organized by Simpson, it became the Christian and Missionary Alliance, one of the most missions-minded denominations in modern American Protestantism.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_B._Simpson
1901 McKinley assassin is executed. On this day in 1901, President William McKinley's assassin, Leon Czolgosz, is executed in the electric chair at Auburn Prison in New York. Czolgosz had shot McKinley on September 6, 1901; the president succumbed to his wounds eight days later.
McKinley was shaking hands in a long reception line at the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York, when a 28-year-old anarchist named Leon Czolgosz approached him with a gun concealed in a handkerchief in his right hand. McKinley, perhaps assuming the handkerchief was an attempt by Czolgosz to hide a physical defect, kindly reached for the man's left hand to shake. Czolgosz moved in close to the president and fired two shots into McKinley's chest. The president reportedly rose slightly on his toes before collapsing forward, saying "be careful how you tell my wife." Czolgosz was attempting to fire a third bullet into the stricken president when aides wrestled him to the ground.
McKinley suffered one superficial wound to the sternum and another bullet dangerously entered his abdomen. He was rushed into surgery and seemed to be on the mend by September 12. Later that day, however, the president's condition worsened rapidly and, on September 14, McKinley died from gangrene that had remained undetected in the internal wound. According to witnesses, McKinley's last words were those of the hymn "Nearer My God to Thee." Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as president immediately following McKinley's death.
Czolgosz, a Polish immigrant, grew up in Detroit and had worked as a child laborer in a steel mill. As a young adult, he gravitated toward socialist and anarchist ideology. He claimed to have killed McKinley because the president was the head of what Czolgosz thought was a corrupt government. The unrepentant killer's last words were 'I killed the president because he was the enemy of the good people "the working people."' His electrocution was allegedly filmed by Thomas Edison.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Czolgosz
1901 In Amherst, Massachusetts nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine. Born Honora Kelley, was an American serial killer. She confessed to 31 murders in 1901. She is quoted as saying that her ambition was "to have killed more people — helpless people — than any other man or woman who ever lived...".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Toppan
1904 First intercity trucking service (Colorado City & Snyder, Texas)
1915 Jane Addams writes to Woodrow Wilson about dangers of preparing for war. On October 29, 1915, Jane Addams, a leading American social activist, writes to United States President Woodrow Wilson, warning him of the potential dangers of readying the country to enter the First World War.
When World War I broke out in the summer of 1914, President Wilson accurately reflected the isolationist view of the majority of Americans when he called the war a cause "with which we have nothing to do, whose causes cannot touch us." In the wake of the German sinking of the British passenger ship Lusitania in May 1915 which left 1,201 people dead, including 128 Americans public opinion, along with U.S. governmental policy, began to turn ever more steadily towards entrance into the war against the Central Powers. Before the end of that year, Wilson had issued a call to improve U.S. military preparedness, including a spike in the production of armaments and a twofold increase in the size of the army.
Addams, the celebrated founder of Hull House, a social settlement that served as a welfare agency for needy families in Chicago, had also become a leading international voice for peace and the chairwoman of the Women's Peace Party. In April 1915, she attended the International Congress of Women at The Hague in the Netherlands, an assemblage of women from around the world, including the belligerent nations, who advocated a non-violent method of conflict resolution. Disturbed by Wilson's call for increased military preparedness, Addams wrote to the president on October 29 of that year in the name of the Women¡'s Peace Party.
Above all, Addams expressed concern that the rich, powerful U.S. was setting an example for other, poorer nations, who would feel compelled to increase their own preparedness and move the world ever further from the ideal of peace and international cooperation. "At this crisis of the world, to establish a "citizen soldiery" and enormously to increase our fighting equipment would inevitably make all other nations fear instead of trust us," Adams argued. "It has been the proud hope of American citizens who love their kind, a hope nobly expressed in some of your own messages, that to the United States might be granted the unique privilege not only of helping the war-worn world to a lasting peace, but of aiding toward a gradual and proportional lessening of that vast burden of armament which has crushed to poverty the people of the old world."
Wilson assured Addams at the time that he had no intention of leading the U.S. into war; he was in fact re-elected that November on the slogan "He Kept Us Out of War." By the following spring, however, events¡ªincluding continued German aggression at sea and an intercepted telegram from the German foreign office proposing an alliance between Germany and Mexico in the case of war with the U.S.¡ªhad seemingly conspired to change his mind and to turn the tide of American public opinion more fully toward intervention against the Central Powers. On April 2, 1917, Wilson delivered his war message to Congress; the U.S. formally entered World War I four days later.
Addams continued her work with the Women¡¯s Peace Party, which in 1919 became the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). As the WILPF's first president, she served until 1929; she also assisted Herbert Hoover, head of the American Relief Administration, with that organization's efforts to provide food supplies for millions in poverty-stricken post-war Europe. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, Addams died four years later; her funeral was held in the courtyard of Hull House.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Addams
1917 The temperature at Denver, CO, dipped to zero, and at Soda Butte, WY, the mercury plunged to 33 degrees below zero, a U.S. record for the month of October. (David Ludlum)
1919 The Apostolic Christian Association was incorporated in Atlanta, Georgia. It later merged with what is now the International Pentecostal Church of Christ, headquartered in London, Ohio
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Pentecostal_Church_of_Christ
1921 The Link River Dam, a part of the Klamath Reclamation Project, is completed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_River_Dam
1921 Second trial of Sacco and Vanzetti in USA.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacco_and_Vanzetti
1921 The Harvard University football team loses to Centre College, ending a 25 game winning streak. This is considered one of the biggest upsets in college football.
1922 The King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, appoints Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Emmanuel_III_of_Italy
"Charleston" as danced in It's a Wonderful Life
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_(dance)
1929 Stock market crashes. Black Tuesday hits Wall Street as investors trade 16,410,030 shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors, and stock tickers ran hours behind because the machinery could not handle the tremendous volume of trading. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression.
During the 1920s, the U.S. stock market underwent rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August 1929, a period of wild speculation. By then, production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value. Among the other causes of the eventual market collapse were low wages, the proliferation of debt, a weak agriculture, and an excess of large bank loans that could not be liquidated.
Stock prices began to decline in September and early October 1929, and on October 18 the fall began. Panic set in, and on October 24¡ªBlack Thursday¡ªa record 12,894,650 shares were traded. Investment companies and leading bankers attempted to stabilize the market by buying up great blocks of stock, producing a moderate rally on Friday. On Monday, however, the storm broke anew, and the market went into free fall. Black Monday was followed by Black Tuesday, in which stock prices collapsed completely.
After October 29, 1929, stock prices had nowhere to go but up, so there was considerable recovery during succeeding weeks. Overall, however, prices continued to drop as the United States slumped into the Great Depression, and by 1932 stocks were worth only about 20 percent of their value in the summer of 1929. The stock market crash of 1929 was not the sole cause of the Great Depression, but it did act to accelerate the global economic collapse of which it was also a symptom. By 1933, nearly half of America's banks had failed, and unemployment was approaching 15 million people, or 30 percent of the workforce. It would take World War II, and the massive level of armaments production taken on by the United States, to finally bring the country out of the Depression after a decade of suffering.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Tuesday
1930 The tune, "It Must Be True," was recorded on Victor by Bing Crosby
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_Crosby
1940 First peacetime military draft in US history. The first peacetime conscription came with the Selective Service Act of 1940, which established the Selective Service System as an independent agency. The duration of service was originally twelve months. It was expanded to eighteen months in 1941. When the United States entered World War II, service was required until six months after the end of the war. The first draft number ever picked for World War II was 158, picked by a blindfolded Henry L. Stimson out of a goldfish bowl.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_States#Interwar
1941 Holocaust: In the Kaunas Ghetto over 10,000 Jews are shot by German occupiers at the Ninth Fort, a massacre known as the "Great Action".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaunas_Ghetto
1942 The British protest against the persecution of Jews.On this day in 1942, leading British clergymen and political figures hold a public meeting to register their outrage over the persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany.
In a message sent to the meeting, Prime Minister Winston Churchill summed up the sentiments of all present: "The systematic cruelties to which the Jewish people-men, women, and children-have been exposed under the Nazi regime are amongst the most terrible events of history, and place an indelible stain upon all who perpetrate and instigate them. Free men and women," Churchill continued, "denounce these vile crimes, and when this world struggle ends with the enthronement of human rights, racial persecution will be ended."
The very next day, the power of protest over cruelty was made evident elsewhere in Europe. When Gestapo officers in Brussels removed more than 100 Jewish children from a children's home for deportation, staff members refused to leave the sides of their young charges. Both the staff and the children were removed to a deportation camp set up in Malines. Protests rained down on the Germans, who had occupied the nation for more than two years, including one lodged by the Belgian secretary-general of the Ministry of Justice. The children and staff were returned to the home.
1942 The Alaska highway was opened to traffic. At mile 1202, Beaver Creek , the final connection was completed here when the 97th Engineers met the 18th Engineers. The bombing of Pearl Harbor in Dec 1941 spurred construction of the Alaska Highway. Alaska was considered vulnerable to a Japanese invasion, and the highway was deemed a military necessity. Construction began in Mar 1942, and was completed 8 months later. Literally bulldozed through the wilderness, road conditions along the Alcan were horrific; 90 degree turns and 25 percent grades were not uncommon. Rain and truck traffic turned sections of the road into an impassable mire. The highway was improved in 1943. The 1,523 mile highway officially opened to the public in 1948.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Highway
1942 A tornado struck the town of Berryville in northwest Arkansas killing 20 persons and causing half a million dollars damage. (David Ludlum)
B.W.T. van Slobbe, the Mayor of Breda, giving a welcome speech to the Polish 1st Armoured Division
1944 The city of Breda in the Netherlands is liberated by 1st Polish Armoured Division.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breda#World_War_II
1945 The first ball point pen in the U.S. went on sale at Gimbels Department Stores for $12.95. In June, 1945, Chicago businessman Milton Reynolds, in Buenos Aires on unrelated business, saw the Biro pen in a store, recognized the pen¡¯s sales potential and bought a few as samples. Reynolds returned to America and started manufacturing. He copied the product in four months, (ignoring the patent rights of the Argentine manufacturer, Eversharp Company. On the first day of sale, his Reynolds' Rocket pen was immediately successful; $100,000 worth are sold its first day on the market). The ballpoint pen became a fad. However, it leaked, skipped and was unreliable. By 1948, the price dropped to less than 50 cents. Reynolds' company failed in 1951.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_point_pen
1946 "Sky King" debuts on CBS radio. Sky King was sponsored by Peter Pan Peanut Butter,made by Derby Foods Inc., a subsidary of Swift & Company.The first 15 min.radio program was radio program was aired Monday , October 29,1946 transcribed from Chicago on WGN,from 5:15 to 5:30 pm. The show was such a smashing success that the program was increased to a full half hour with each one a complete adventure.The rest of childrens radio programs such as Superman,Captain Midnight and Tom Mix, all were quick to follow suit."Sky King" starred Jack Lester, then Earl Nightingale, and finally, Roy Engel, as Sky.
1947 A forest fire at Concord, N.H. was drenched with rain produced by seeding cumulus clouds with dry ice, the first such event in the U.S. The rain-making planes were flown over the burning area by seeders from the General Electric Co. of Schnectady, N.Y. Part of Project Cirrus, the experimental mission was a joint weather research program of the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Office of Naval Research. However, natural rainfall followed, caused by natural conditions, so it was not possible to measure the artificial rainfall.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding
1948 Killer smog claims elderly victims. Killer smog continues to hover over Donora, Pennsylvania, on this day in 1948. Over a five-day period, the smog killed about 20 people and made thousands more seriously ill.
Donora was a town of 14,000 people on the Monongahela River in a valley surrounded by hills. The town was home to steel mills and a zinc smelting plant that had released excessive amounts of sulphuric acid, carbon monoxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere for years prior to the disaster. During the 1920s, the owner of the zinc plant, Zinc Works, paid off local residents for damages caused by the pollution. Still, there was little or no regulation of the air pollution caused by the industries of Donora.
Beginning sometime on October 26, weather conditions in the valley brought a heavy fog into Donora. This fog appears to have trapped the airborne pollutants emitted from the zinc smelting plant and steel mills close to the ground, where they were inhaled by the local residents. Soon, a wave of calls came in to area hospitals and physicians. Dr. William Rongaus, the head of the local Board of Health, suggested that all residents with pre-existing respiratory problems leave town immediately. However, 11 people, all elderly and with heart problems or asthma, were already dead.
Most residents then attempted to evacuate, but the heavy smog and increased traffic made leaving difficult. Thousands flooded the hospitals when they experienced difficulty breathing. It was not until October 31 that Zinc Works shut down operations. Later that day, rain fell on Donora and dispersed the pollutants. By that time, another nine people had already perished.
The Donora smog disaster received national attention when it was reported by Walter Winchell on his radio show. In the aftermath, air pollution finally became a matter of public concern; the incident led to the passage of 1955 Clean Air Act. The Donora Zinc Works shuttered operations in 1957.
Years later, a local high-school student's research and activism led the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission to place a commemorative plaque in Donora honoring the victims of the killer smog.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Donora_smog
1949 "That Lucky Old Sun" by Frankie Laine topped the charts. "That's My Desire" hit number four in the American charts in 1947, and Laine re-entered the Top Ten in 1948 with "Shine." He hit the big time the following year, with two huge number one hits, "That Lucky Old Sun" and "Mule Train." Another chart-topper, 1950's "The Cry of the Wild Goose," was his last for Mercury, and he signed with Columbia just one year later.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Laine
1953 BCPA Flight 304 DC-6 crashes near San Francisco, California. Pianist William Kapell is among the 19 killed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCPA_Flight_304
1955 Warner Brothers copyright registered "A Rebel without a Cause." The classic film about alienated and rebellious youth that made James Dean an indelible icon. It also served as a springboard for the acting careers of its two other stars Natalie Wood (in her first non-child 'adult' role) and unknown 16 year-old actor Sal Mineo. It affords a classic, semi-glamorized portrait of three troubled, frustrated, anguished, and identity-seeking teenagers - all outsiders, alienated and outcast from the world and values of parents and adults, who attain maturity through rebellion and tragic circumstances.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Without_a_Cause
1955 "Autumn Leaves" by Roger Williams topped the charts. After releasing a few singles, Williams had his first hit with the arpeggio-laden "Autumn Leaves" in 1955. The single reached number one on the U.S. charts and began a streak of 22 hit singles that ran through 1969; he had two other Top Ten hits, "Near You" in 1958 and "Born Free" in 1966. Williams was equally successful on the album charts, racking up a total of 38 hit records between 1956 and 1972.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn_Leaves_(song)
1956 A violent tornado, or series of tornadoes, moved along a path more than 100 miles in length from south of North Platte NE into Rock County NE. It was an unusually late occurence so far north and west in the U.S. for such a storm. (The Weather Channel)
1956 John Cameron Swayze and "The Camel News Caravan" replaced by Huntley-Brinkley
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cameron_Swayze
1957 Israel's prime minister David Ben Gurion and five of his ministers are injured when a hand grenade is tossed into Israel's parliament, the Knesset.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion
1958 The first coronary angiogram was performed by Dr. F. Mason Sones, Jr. (1919-1985), a pediatric cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic. This is a diagnostic x-ray procedure designed to visualize blockages of the small nutrient arteries of the heart. Sones discovered the technique by accidental. In studies on dog's hearts, dye injected in coronary arteries caused heart fibrillation, and therefore had never been used on humans. While attempting to dye a patient's diseased vessels by injecting contrast material only near their openings, on one occasion about 30 cc of the dye went into the patient's coronary artery. Expected heart fibrillation (requiring the opening of the patient's chest to treat) did not occur. Thus, lower amounts of dye could in fact be used safely.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronary_angiogram
1959 The first corporation to use closed-circuit television was General Mills of Minneapolis, MN, beaming simultaneous meetings in seven cities
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television
1960 Muhammad Ali's (Cassius Clay's) first professional fight, beats Tunney Hunsaker in 6. Muhammad Ali AKA Cassius Clay had conquered Rome, but his professional debut was not designed to provide the Olympic champion with an easy knock-over first time out. Tunney Hunsaker was police chief of Fayetteville, West Virginia and a seasoned pro boxer on the side. Clay hammered out a six-round decision, sticking and moving but without the verve he had shown in his ascent to the summit of the amateur ranks.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali
1964 Star of India & other jewels are stolen in NY. On October 29, 1964, the famous golf-ball-sized stone was stolen, along with several other stones including the Eagle Diamond and the de Long Ruby. The thieves unlocked a bathroom window during museum open hours, climbed in that night, found that the sapphire was the only gem in the collection protected by an alarm -- and the battery for that was dead. So they raked up the stones, and fled the same way they came in. The stones were valued at more than $400,000. Within two days, the notorious cat burglar, smuggler, and one-time surfing champion Jack Murphy was arrested along with two accomplices, later receiving a three-year sentence. The uninsured Star of India was recovered in a locker in a Miami bus station.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_of_India_(gem)
1966 National Organization For Women (NOW) is founded.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Organization_for_Women
1969 The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
1970 Neil Diamond received a gold record for "Cracklin' Rosie." Diamond's single, "Cracklin' Rosie" (famously referring to the cheap wine Cracklin' Rose), which was released in July and became his biggest hit yet, topping the charts in October, when it was certified as his third gold single. (It eventually went platinum). Also released in July 1970 was the live album Gold, which had been recorded in March at the Troubadour nightclub in Los Angeles. It containing new versions of "Solitary Man," "Cherry, Cherry," "Kentucky Woman," and "Thank the Lord for the Night Time."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Diamond
1971 The first successful use of electricity to repair a bone fracture is reported by surgeons at the University of Pennsylvania. Electrical currents have been used to heal bone since the mid-1800s, and the effect of electrical stimulation on bone has been long studied and well documented.When human bone is bent or broken, it generates an electrical charge ("On the Piezoelectric Effect of Bone", Fukada and Yasuda, 1957). This low level electrical charge stimulates the body's internal repair mechanism.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsed_electromagnetic_field_therapy
1977 Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life," goes #1 & stays #1 for 10 weeks. At first, this was going to be sung by a jingle singer named Kasey Cisyk, and she recorded the original version that was used in the film. For over a year, no movie studio would release the film and no record company would release the song. When the movie finally got picked up, it was time to record the song as a single, and Brooks went with Debbie Boone instead of Cisyk. This won the 1977 Grammy for Song Of The Year. Boone also won that year for Best New Artist. It was by far the biggest hit of 1977. It was #1 for 10 weeks in the US.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Boone
1980 Demonstration flight of a secretly modified C-130 for an Iran hostage crisis rescue attempt ends in crash landing at Eglin Air Force Base's Duke Field, Florida leading to cancellation of Operation Credible Sport.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Credible_Sport
1980 Mark David Chapman, John Lennon's murderer, leaves for New York from his home in Hawaii.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_David_Chapman
1981 Loretta Lynn received a gold record for her album, "Greatest Hits, Vol. 2." All of the attention surrounding the movie Coal Miner's Daughter made Loretta Lynn a household name with the American mainstream. Although she continued to be a popular concert attraction throughout the '80s, she wasn't able to continue her domination of the country charts. "I Lie," her last Top Ten single, arrived in early 1982, while her last Top 40 single, "Heart Don't Do This to Me," was in 1985.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_Lynn
1983 "Islands in the Stream" by Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton topped the charts. "Islands in the Stream" was a 1983 hit country music single for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, written by the Bee Gees (whose vocals also appear on the record). It was the first single from Rogers' album Eyes That See in the Dark and the second pop number-one for both Rogers and Parton (Rogers having been there with 1980's "Lady" and Parton with 1981's "9 to 5").
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islands_in_the_Stream
1987 Severe thunderstorms in Arizona produced wind gusts to 86 mph at the Glendale Airport near Phoenix, baseball size hail and 70 mph winds at Wickenburg, and up to an inch of rain in fifteen minutes in Yavapai County and northwest Maricopa County. Arizona Public Service alone reported 2.5 million dollars damage from the storms. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1987 Thomas Hearns wins unprecidented 4th different weight boxing title
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hearns
1988 Wintry weather prevailed in the Upper Midwest. South Bend, IN, equalled their record for October with a morning low of 23 degrees. International Falls MN reported a record low of 11 degrees in the morning, then dipped down to 8 degrees above zero late in the evening. (The National Weather Summary)
1988 Jim Elliott (US) begins 24-hr paced outdoor race for 548.9 mi
1989 Thunderstorms developing along a cold front produced severe weather in Oklahoma and north central Texas during the late afternoon and evening hours. Thunderstorms in Oklahoma produced weak tornadoes near Snyder and Davidson, and produced hail two inches in diameter at Altus. Large hail damaged 60 to 80 percent of the cotton crop in Tillman County OK. Nine cities in the northeastern U.S. reported record high temperatures for the date as readings warmed into the 70s. For Marquette MI it marked their fifth straight day of record warmth. Arctic cold invaded the western U.S. Lows of 7 degrees at Alamosa CO and 9 degrees at Elko NV were records for the date. (The National Weather Summary)
1991 Space probe Galileo become the first human object to fly past an asteroid, Gaspra, making its closest approach at a distance of 1,604 km, passing at a speed of 8 km/sec (5 mi/sec). The encounter provided much data, including 150 images, which showed Gaspra has numerous craters indicating it has suffered numerous collisions since its formation. Gaspra is about 20-km long and orbits the Sun in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Gaspra, asteroid 951, was discovered by Ukrainian astronomer Grigoriy N. Neujamin (1916) who named it after a Black Sea retreat. In the photograph (left), subtle color variations have been exaggerated by NASA to highlight changes in reflectivity, surface structure and composition.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaspra_(asteroid)
1994 Francisco Martin Duran fires over two dozen shots at the White House (Duran is later convicted of trying to kill US President Bill Clinton).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Martin_Duran
1998 U.S. astronaut John Glenn was launched into space aboard Spac Shuttle Discovery. In 1962, Glenn first made history as the first American to orbit the Earth, strapped into a nine-by-seven-foot capsule. Now at age 77, and a U.S. Senator from Ohio, Glenn was a member of the STS-95 crew, serving as a Payload Specialist, aboard the Discovery. He carried out studies on the commonalities between the effects of space flight and aging. His microgravity research results relate to product-oriented commercial applications in such diverse fields as medical, agriculture and manufacturing. The 9-day mission returned on 7 Nov 1998, after 134 Earth orbits, traveling 3.6 million miles in 213-hr 44-min. His original flight had lasted about 5 hours.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glenn
1998 ATSC HDTV broadcasting in the United States is inaugurated with the launch of STS-95 space shuttle mission.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Television_Systems_Committee_standards
2002 Ho Chi Minh City ITC Inferno, a fire destroys a luxurious department store where 1500 people shopping. Over 60 people died and over 100 are missing. It is the deadliest disaster in Vietnam during peacetime.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_City_ITC_Inferno
2004 The Arabic news network Al Jazeera broadcasts an excerpt from a video of Osama bin Laden in which the terrorist leader first admits direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks and references the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden
2008 Delta Air Lines merges with Northwest Airlines, creating the world's largest airline and reducing the number of US legacy carriers to 5.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Air_Lines#History
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines#Merger_with_Delta_Air_Lines
www.todayinsci.com/10/10_29.htm
daysuntil.com/Election-Day/index.html
www.weatherforyou.com/cgi-bin/weather_history/today2S.pl
www.christianhistorytimeline.com/lives_events/birthday/index.php
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/john-glenn-returns-to-space
www.amug.org/~jpaul/oct29.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_29
www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_29_(Eastern_Orthodox_liturgics)