On This Day: Major World Events of October 29
October 29 is the 302nd day of the year, and the date carries major events in the history of many countries, from the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey and Wall Street's Black Tuesday crash to the first ARPANET link and astronaut John Glenn's return to space at age 77. This column records them year by year, stating facts only.
In 1618, in the United Kingdom, explorer and writer Walter Raleigh was executed at the Old Palace Yard in Westminster, London. In 1923, in Turkey, the Grand National Assembly proclaimed the Republic of Turkey in Ankara and elected Mustafa Kemal, later known as Ataturk, as its first president, with Ankara as the capital. In 1929, in the United States, the New York Stock Exchange collapsed as the Dow Jones index closed down more than 12 percent and some 16 million shares changed hands, a day remembered as Black Tuesday and a landmark of the Great Depression.
In 1956, Israeli forces invaded Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, beginning the Suez Crisis, in which the United Kingdom and France later intervened. In 1959, in France, the comic Asterix was first published in the magazine Pilote. In 1960, in the United States, Muhammad Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, won his first professional boxing bout in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1964, the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar changed its name to Tanzania, with Julius Nyerere as president.
In 1969, in the United States, ARPANET created the first computer-to-computer link; the U.S. Defense Department-funded network is regarded as a forerunner of the internet. In 1998, in the United States, John Glenn, 77, returned to space aboard the space shuttle Discovery, becoming the oldest person to fly in space at the time, 36 years after his first orbital flight in 1962. In 2012, in the United States, Hurricane Sandy made landfall on the New Jersey coast as one of the largest Atlantic hurricanes on record, killing more than 230 people across several countries and causing nearly $70 billion in damage.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 宇航员约翰·格伦与「发现号」航天飞机（资料图）。Robert Markowitz / Mark Sowa 摄，Public domain，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Astronaut John Glenn and the space shuttle Discovery (file photo). Photo by Robert Markowitz / Mark Sowa, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
