This Day in History: October 29
Featured Event
1929
Collapse of U.S. stock market prices
Just five days after nearly 13 million shares of U.S. stock were sold in one day in 1929, an additional 16 million shares were sold this day, called “Black Tuesday,” further fueling the crisis known as the Great Depression.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Featured Biography
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
president of Liberia
1950
Abdullah Gül
president of Turkey
1947
Richard Dreyfuss
American actor
1938
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
president of Liberia
1897
Joseph Goebbels
German propagandist
1891
Fanny Brice
American actress
More Events On This Day
2015
It was announced that China was ending its one-child policy; beginning in 2016, couples could have two children. Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about China
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1998
Hurricane Mitch made landfall, hitting northern Honduras; one of the deadliest Atlantic hurricanes on record, it caused some 11,000 deaths in Central America. Test your knowledge of disasters of historic proportions
U.S. Geological Survey
1995
Terry Southern, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter for Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider, died at age 71. Take our movie quiz
1956
Israel's army attacked Egypt in the Sinai Peninsula in a fight for control of the Suez Canal area. Test your knowledge of Egyptian history
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1950
King Gustav V of Sweden, a strong proponent of Swedish neutrality during World War II, died in Stockholm. Take our quiz about kings and emperors
UPI—Bettmann/Corbis
1933
American artist George Luks—one of a group of American painters popularly known as the Ashcan school because of their realistic treatment of urban scenes—died at age 66. Take our ultimate art quiz
Photograph by kaldari. Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tenn., gift of Miss Inez Hyder, accession number 1956.1
1923
The Republic of Turkey was established, largely through the efforts of Kemal Atatürk, who is considered the country's founder and served as its first president. Test your knowledge of Turkish and Ottoman history
Victor Console/ANL/REX/Shutterstock.com
1901
Anarchist Leon Czolgosz was executed for the assassination of U.S. President William McKinley. Read more about Leon Czolgosz in our list of nine infamous assassins and the world leaders they dispatched
From The Manner of a Man that Kills by L. Vernon Briggs, 1921
1897
Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda for the German Third Reich under Adolf Hitler, was born. Take our quiz about infamous Nazis
Interfoto/Friedrich Rauch, Munich
1709
The community of Cistercian nuns at Port-Royal, an abbey in France, was dispersed and exiled to other convents because of their involvement with Jansenism. Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about world religions
Betrand Gardel—Hemis/Alamy
1618
British adventurer and writer Sir Walter Raleigh was executed for treason. Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about famous Englishmen
Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum; photograph, J.R. Freeman & Co. Ltd.
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