TIME TRAVELING, October 29: 1618 English adventurer and writer Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded under a sentence leveled against him 15 years earlier for conspiracy against King James I. 1682 William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, lands at what is now Chester, Pa. 1777 John Hancock, the first member of the Continental Congress to sign the Declaration of Independence (and with the boldest signature), resigns as president of the Continental Congress due to a prolonged illness. 1858 The first store opens in a small frontier town in the Colorado Territory that a month later will take the name of Denver. 1863 The International Committee of the Red Cross is founded. 1901 Leon Czolgosz, assassin of President William McKinley, is executed in the electric chair at Auburn Prison in New York. Czolgosz shot McKinley on September 6, 1901, and the president died eight days later. 1929 “Black Tuesday” hits Wall Street as more than 16 million shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange on a single day and billions of dollars are lost, wiping out thousands of investors and setting off America’s Great Depression. 1940 The first peacetime military draft begins in the United States. 1945 The first ballpoint pens to be made commercially go on sale at Gimbels Department Store in New York at $12.50 each. 1956 “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley premiers on NBC. 1960 Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) wins his first professional fight, beating Tunney Hunsaker in six rounds. 1966 The National Organization for Women (NOW) is founded. 1969 The U.S. Supreme Court orders an immediate end to all school segregation. 1971 Duane Allman, 24, guitarist and leader of the Allman Brothers Band, is killed when he loses control of his motorcycle and drives into the side of a flatbed truck in Macon, Ga. 1973 O.J. Simpson of the Buffalo Bills sets two NFL records, carrying the ball 39 times and running 157 yards, putting him over 1,000 yards in only the seventh game of the season. 1991 The U.S. “Galileo” is the first spacecraft to visit an asteroid (Gaspra). 1994 Francisco Martin Duran fires more than two dozen shots at the White House while standing on Pennsylvania Avenue. He is later convicted of trying to kill President Bill Clinton. 1995 Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers sets a new NFL career receiving record of 14,040 yards. 1998 Thirty-six years after he became the first American to orbit the Earth, Senator John Glenn Jr. is launched into space as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle “Discovery.” At age 77, he is the oldest human ever to travel in space.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 05:18:05 +0000
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