October 29: NY Stock Exchange collapses, John Glenn becomes oldest person in space

October 29, 11:27 PMPortland History ExaminerNatalie Leavitt

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Maine Fast Fact: Prior to becoming a state, Maine was known as the District of Maine.

Births:

• 1942: Bob Ross, American painter, art instructor, creator and host of the television series The Joy of Painting
• 1946: Peter Green, British musician, guitarist and founder of the band Fleetwood Mac
• 1947: Richard Dreyfuss, American actor
• 1948: Kate Jackson, American actress, director and producer, known for her role as Sabrina Duncan on the television series Charlie’s Angels
• 1955: Kevin Dubrow, American singer, lead vocalist for the heavy metal band Quiet Riot
• 1957: Dan Castellaneta, American actor, comedian and voice artist, best known as the voice of Homer Simpson on the television series The Simpsons
• 1971: Winona Ryder, American actress
• 1972: Gabrielle Union, American actress
• 1980: Ben Foster, American actor
• 1981: Amanda Beard, American Olympic swimmer

Deaths:

• 1911: Joseph Pulitzer, Hungarian-American publisher, best known for posthumously establishing the Pulitzer Prize
• 1947: Frances Cleveland Preston, First Lady of the United States, wife of President Grover Cleveland
• 1971: Duane Allman, American musician, lead guitarist and co-founder of the rock group The Allman Brothers Band
• 1987: Woody Herman, American jazz musician

History:

• 1863: Eighteen countries meet in Geneva and agree to form the International Red Cross.
• 1901: The assassin of President William McKinley, Leon Czolgosz, is executed by electrocution.
• 1923: Turkey becomes a republic after the termination of the Ottoman Empire.
• 1929: Stock prices collapse on the New York Stock Exchange causing extreme panic and thousands of investors are wiped.
• 1941: Over 10,000 Jews are shot by German occupiers in the Kaunas Ghetto, a massacre known as the “Great Action.”
• 1956: The Huntley-Brinkley Report premiers as NBC’s nightly newscast; The Suez Crisis begins when Israeli forces invade the Sinai Peninsula and push Egyptian forces back to the Suez Canal.
• 1960: Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali) wins his first professional fight in Louisville, Kentucky.
• 1964: Tanganyika and Zanzibar unite to form the Republic of Tanzania in Africa; Thieves steal the Star of India and other gems from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
• 1966: The National Organization for Women is founded.
• 1969: The first host-to-host connection is made on Arpanet, an experimental military computer network, between UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California which is the beginning to the Internet.
• 1994: Francisco Martin Duran fires 29 shots at the White House in an attempt to assassinate President Bill Clinton.
• 1998: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off with John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space at age 77; A fire at a nightclub in Gothenburg, Sweden kills 63 people and injures 200 people.
• 2002: A fire at the International Trade Centre in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam kills 60 people and injures 100 people and is the deadliest disaster in Vietnam during peacetime.
• 2004: Al Jazeera broadcasts a video of Osama bin Laden admitting direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks and making references to the 2004 presidential election.

October 29 is Republic Day in Turkey, a celebration of the day it became a republic in 1923 after the end of the Ottoman Empire.