539 BC On October 29, 539 BC, Cyrus the Great of Persia entered Babylon, and detained the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, Nabonidus. Cyrus the Great is best known for liberating the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, allowing them to resettle and rebuild Jerusalem, earning him an honored place in Judaism.
1618 Sir Walter Raleigh was condemned to death by James I of England after a gold-seeking expedition in South America that he led failed miserably. Raleigh was executed outside the Palace Yard, London on October 29, 1618. He defiantly took a pipe of tobacco to the scaffold against the wishes of the anti-smoking King James and just before his execution Raleigh had a smoke to settle his spirits. He actually died with a pipe in his mouth.
1787 Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, based on Don Juan, the legendary fictional libertine, premiered in the Estates Theatre in Prague on October 29, 1787. The work was rapturously received, as was often true of Mozart's work in Prague. Don Giovanni is generally regarded as one of Mozart's supreme achievements and one of the greatest operas of all time.
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| Cyrus the Great liberated the Jews from the Babylonian captivity |
1618 Sir Walter Raleigh was condemned to death by James I of England after a gold-seeking expedition in South America that he led failed miserably. Raleigh was executed outside the Palace Yard, London on October 29, 1618. He defiantly took a pipe of tobacco to the scaffold against the wishes of the anti-smoking King James and just before his execution Raleigh had a smoke to settle his spirits. He actually died with a pipe in his mouth.
1787 Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, based on Don Juan, the legendary fictional libertine, premiered in the Estates Theatre in Prague on October 29, 1787. The work was rapturously received, as was often true of Mozart's work in Prague. Don Giovanni is generally regarded as one of Mozart's supreme achievements and one of the greatest operas of all time.
1792 On October 29, 1792, Lt. William Broughton, a member of Captain George Vancouver's discovery expedition, observed a peak in what is now Oregon, during his travels up the Columbia River. He named it Mount Hood after Samuel Hood, a British Admiral at the Battle of the Chesapeake.
1863 In 1862 Swiss-born businessman Henry Dunant published a book, Memory of Solferino, in which he suggested an international association of volunteers be raised to help care for the wounded and imprisoned in wartime. Arising from Dunant's suggestion, the International Committee of the Red Cross was created on October 29, 1863 in Geneva. Its job, under international law, was to protect the life and dignity of the victims of war.
1901 On October 29, 1901 outside Lexington, North Carolina, a freight train crashed into part of the train carrying Buffalo Bill's show. 110 horses were killed by the accident or were put down later. No people were killed but sharpshooter Annie Oakley's injuries were so severe she was told she would never walk again, though she eventually did.
1923 Turkey became a republic following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire on October 29, 1923. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was their first president. Atatürk ruthlessly set out to Westernize the republic he had established. European dress was imposed, polygamy was abolished, women were enfranchised and the Latin script replaced the Arabic. Republic Day is a public holiday in Turkey commemorating the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey. The celebrations start at 1:00 pm on October 28 and continue for 35 hours.
1924 Children's novelist Frances Hodgson Burnett died on October 29, 1924. When her younger son, Vivian, clamored for something for little boys to read, Frances wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy in 1886 and modeled the main character after him. Mrs. Burnett found inspiration for the character in Vivian's blonde curls and Oscar Wilde's style of dress.
1929 The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the 1930s. The depression originated in the United States, where it began in August 1929, when the country's economy first went into recession. It became worldwide news with the Wall Street Crash of October 29, 1929 (known as Black Tuesday). It was then that the effects of a declining economy were felt, and a major worldwide economic downturn ensued.
1945 American entrepreneur Milton Reynolds first came across the Bíró ballpoint pen during a business trip to Argentina where they were first made. Recognizing their commercial potential, he founded Reynolds International Pen Company to manufacture them. His product Reynolds' Rocket ballpoint pens went on sale at Gimbels department store in New York City on October 29, 1945 for $12.95. Reynolds advertised it as the pen "to write under water." It was immediately successful: $100,000 worth sold the first day on the market.
1946 Surgeon-Captain Rick Jolly was born on October 29, 1946. A British Army surgeon in the Falklands conflict, he saved every life under his care, both British and Argentine. Jolly was the only man decorated by both Britain and Argentina for his services in the war.
1959 The series of Asterix comic books first appeared in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Pilote on October 29, 1959. Over 350 million copies of the Asterix comic books have been sold worldwide in 111 languages. Although Gaulish leaders’ names really did end in -ix, the Asterix comic’s characters’ names include magic potion brewing druid Getafix, the mysterious Doublosix (one short of 007), the portly Vitalstatistix and his awkward wife Impedimenta.
1960 Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) made his professional debut seven and a half weeks after winning the gold medal in the Olympic light heavyweight boxing competition, Clay won his first professional fight in Louisville, Kentucky on October 29, 1960. winning a six-round decision over Tunney Hunsaker. By February 1964 he was the World Heavyweight Champion.
1991 On October 29, 1991 Galileo became the first spacecraft to visit an asteroid when it made a flyby of 951 Gaspra on its way to Jupiter. The American spacecraft passed within 1,600 km (990 mi) at a relative speed of about 8 km/s (18,000 mph). 57 images were returned to Earth, the closest taken from a distance of 5,300 km (3,300 mi).
1998 When Space Shuttle Discovery blasted off on October 29, 1998 with 77-year old astronaut John Glenn on board, he became the oldest person to go into space. Glenn one of the Mercury Seven, military test pilots selected in 1959 by NASA as the nation's first astronauts. He was the first American to orbit the Earth, and the fifth person and third American in space.
2003 A small group of developers behind the video game Medal of Honor broke away from that series due to the increasing control of its publisher EA. They instead created a new game and called it Call of Duty, which was released on October 29, 2003. Call Of Duty originally focused on the World War II setting, but the fourth main installment, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) introduced a new, modern setting, and proved to be the breakthrough title for the series.
2007 On October 29, 2007, the North Korean cargo vessel MV Dai Hong Dan was attacked and temporarily seized by Somali pirates off the coast of Somalia. The following day, the crew of the vessel overpowered the pirates with the support of the US destroyer USS James E. Williams. This event led to rare pro US statements from the North Korean media.
2015 China announced a change from its One Child Policy to a Two Child Policy on October 29, 2015. The one-child policy, officially the family planning policy, was a population control policy of China which was introduced in the late 1970s. The policy allowed many exceptions and ethnic minorities in China were exempt.
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