Today is Sunday, Oct. 29, the 302nd day of 2006. 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,” anchored by Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, 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 1964, thieves made off with the Star of India and other gems from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. (The Star and most of the other gems were recovered; three men were convicted of stealing them.)
In 1966, the National Organization for Women was formally organized during a conference in Washington, D.C.
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 1998, Sen. John Glenn, at age 77, roared back into space aboard the shuttle Discovery.
Ten years ago: Hundreds of thousands of New York Yankees fans participated in an enormous blue-and-white ticker-tape parade for the World Series champions.
Five years ago: The FBI issued a terrorism warning asking Americans and law enforcement to be on the highest alert for possible attacks in the United States and abroad. A gunman killed four people in the French city of Tours.
One year ago: Near-simultaneous bombings of two crowded markets in New Delhi, India, killed 60 people and injured more than 200. Hundreds of people slowly filed past the body of civil rights icon Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Ala., 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. Saint Liam won the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Belmont Park.
Today’s Birthdays: Bluegrass singer-musician Sonny Osborne (The Osborne Brothers) is 69. Country singer Lee Clayton is 64. Rock musician Denny Laine is 62. Singer Melba Moore is 61. Musician Peter Green is 60. Actor Richard Dreyfuss is 59. Actress Kate Jackson is 58. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is 55. Actor Dan Castellaneta (“The Simpsons”) is 49. Country musician Steve Kellough (Wild Horses) is 49. Comic strip artist Tom Wilson (“Ziggy”) is 49. Singer Randy Jackson is 45. Rock musician Peter Timmins (Cowboy Junkies) is 41. Actress Joely Fisher is 39. Rapper Paris is 39. Rock singer SA Martinez (311) is 36. Musician Toby Smith is 36. Actress Winona Ryder is 35. Actress Tracee Ellis Ross is 34. Actor Trevor Lissauer is 33. Actress Gabrielle Union is 33. Actress Milena Govich is 30. Actor Brendan Fehr is 29.
Thought for Today: “The one function TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.” — David Brinkley, American broadcast journalist (1920-2003).