This day in history

[October 29, 2008]  (AP)  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)

[Associated Press]

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.