On This Day (October 29)

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• 1268 – Conradin, the last Duke of Swabia, was beheaded in Naples after failing to reclaim Sicily for the House of Hohenstaufen from Charles of Anjou.
• 1618 - English adventurer, writer, and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James I of England.
• 1656 (O.S.) - Edmond Halley, English astronomer born. (d. 1742)
• 1787 – The opera Don Giovanni, based on the legendary fictional libertine Don Juan and composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (pictured), premiered in the Estates Theatre in Prague.
• 1886 - The ticker-tape parade is invented in New York City when office workers spontaneously throw ticker tape into the streets as the Statue of Liberty is dedicated.
• 1897 - Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda born. (d. 1945)
• 1911 - Joseph Pulitzer, Hungarian-born newspaper publisher died. (b. 1847)
• 1921 - Bill Mauldin, American cartoonist born. (d. 2003)
• 1923 – Mustafa Kemal Atatürk became the first President of the Republic of Turkey, a new nation founded from remnants of the Ottoman Empire.
• 1929 - The New York Stock Exchange crashes in what will be called the Crash of '29 or "Black Tuesday," ending the Great Bull Market of the 1920s and beginning the Great Depression.
• 1956 – The Suez Crisis began with Israel invading the Sinai Peninsula and pushing Egyptian forces back toward the Suez Canal.
• 1969 - The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.
• 1994 - Francisco Martin Duran fires over two dozen shots at the White House (Duran was later convicted of trying to kill US President Bill Clinton).
• 1998 – After more than three decades, 77-year old John Glenn returned to space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-95, to study the effects of space flight on the elderly.

On This Day (October 28)

• 1510 - Francis Borgia, Spanish duke and Jesuit priest born. (d. 1572)
• 1636 - A vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony establishes the first college in what would become the United States, today known as Harvard University.
• 1868 - Thomas Edison applied for his first patent, an electrical vote recorder.
• 1875 - Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor, American geographer and editor born. (d. 1966)
• 1893 - Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Pathétique, premiered in St. Petersburg, only nine days before the composer's death.
• 1914 - Jonas Salk, American medical scientist born. (d. 1995)
• 1919 - The U.S. Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson's veto, paving the way for Prohibition to begin the following January.
• 1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that he had ordered the removal of Soviet missile bases in Cuba.
• 1965 - In St. Louis, Missouri, the 630-foot-tall parabolic (catenarian) stainless steel Gateway Arch monument (pictured) is completed.
  
• 2007 - The Boston Red Sox win the World Series in 4 games against the Colorado Rockies.

On This Day (October 27)

• 1728 - James Cook, British naval captain and explorer born. (d. 1779)
• 1782 - Niccolò Paganini, Italian violinist and composer born. (d. 1840)
• 1811 - Isaac Singer, American inventor born. (d. 1875)
• 1923 - Roy Lichtenstein, American artist born. (d. 1997)
• 1936 - Mrs Wallis Simpson filed for divorce which would eventually allow her to marry King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, thus forcing his abdication from the throne.