Today in History in 1929 The New York Stock Exchange collapses, starting the Great Depression and in 1998 American astronaut John Glenn becomes the oldest person in space.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

October 29 is the 302nd day of the year (303rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 63 days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

312 - Constantine I enters Rome after his victory at the Milvian Bridge.

969 - Byzantine troops occupy Antioch, Syria.

1390 - The first witchcraft trial to take place in Paris begins, later ending in three people being executed.

1422 - Charles VII of France becomes king.

1618 – English explorer and statesman Walter Raleigh is executed.

1675 - Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz makes the first use of the long s as a symbol of the integral in calculus.

1787 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Don Giovanni is publicly performed for the first time, in Prague.

1792 - The Mount Hood volcano in Oregon is given its name.

1863 – At a meeting in Geneva, 18 countries agree to form the International Red Cross.

1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Wauhatchie takes place.

1867 - Near the British Virgin Islands, the British ship RMS Rhone sinks in a strong hurricane, killing at least 24 people.

1886 - The first ticker-tape parade takes place in New York City to celebrate the inauguration, on the previous day, of the Statue of Liberty.

1888 - The Convention of Constantinople is signed. It guarantees free maritime passage through the Suez Canal, both in peace-time and in times of war.

1894 - New Zealand passenger steamer Wairarapa strikes a reef off eastern Australia and sinks, killing 121 people.

1900 - An explosion at a New York chemical factory kills almost 200 people.

1901 – For fatally shooting US President William McKinley, Leon Czolgosz is executed by electrocution.

1901 - American nurse Jane Toppan is arrested, after autopsies of the Davies family found traces of poison. It is later revealed that she was a serial killer.

1917 - Max Meiser of Berlin sets the first rules for the game of handball.

1918 - The German High Sea fleet is grounded when sailors mutiny on the night to October 30.

1921 - The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti begins in the United States.

1922 – Victor Emmanuel III of Italy appoints Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister.

1923 – The Republic of Turkey is declared by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Ankara becomes the capital city.

1929 – The New York Stock Exchange collapses, starting the Great Depression.

1941 - Holocaust: In the Kaunas Ghetto, over 10,000 Jews are shot by German occupiers.

1942 - World War II: German U-boat U 575 sinks British passenger ship Abosso in the North Atlantic Ocean, killing 362 people.

1944 - World War II: The city of Breda in the Netherlands is liberated by the 1st Polish Armoured Division.

1945 – Brazilian President Getulio Vargas resigns.

1955 – The Soviet battleship Novorossiysk is sunk by an explosion in Sevastopol, killing 608 officers.

1956 - Suez Canal: Israeli forces invade the Sinai Peninsulaand push Egyptian forces back to the Suez Canal.

1956 - The Tangier Protocol is signed. The international city of Tangier is returned to Morocco.

1960 - In Louisville, Kentucky, Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) wins his first professional fight.

1964 - The United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar changes its name to Tanzania, with Julius Nyerere as President.

1967 - End of the Montreal World's Fair.

1969 - The first-ever computer-to-computer link is created by ARPANET, a forerunner to the internet.

1973 – The Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul is opened by Turkey's then-President Fahri Koroturk, to mark 50 years of the Republic.

1983 - 500,000 people protest against cruise missiles in The Hague, Netherlands.

1986 - Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher opens the last stretch of the M25 motorway.

1991 – The American Galileo spacecraft approaches the 951 Gaspra asteroid.

1994 - Francisco Martin Duran fires over two dozen shots at the White House. He is arrested in suspicion of trying to kill Bill Clinton.

1998 – Hurricane Mitch wreaks havoc across Central America, causing destruction, flooding a several deaths after making landfall.

1998 – South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission condemns all sides for human rights violations.

1998 – American astronaut John Glenn becomes the oldest person in space.

1998 – A Turkish airliner with 39 people on board, flying from Adana to Ankara, is hijacked by Kurdish militants, demanding the pilot to fly to Switzerland. The pilot successfully lands in Ankara after tricking the militants into thinking that he was flying to Sofia, Bulgaria to refuel.

1998 - A nightclub fire in Gothenburg, Sweden kills 63 people.

1999 – A tropical cyclone hits southern and eastern India, particularly affecting the state of Orissa. 10,000 people are estimated to have been killed and 1.5 million made homeless.

2002 – A department store fire in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam kills at least 60 people and leaves around 100 missing.

2004 – Norodom Sihamoni officially succeeds his father Norodom Sihanouk as King of Cambodia.

2005 – Terrorist bombings occur in Delhi, India.

2006 - Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is elected to a second term as President of Brazil.

2008 – Delta Airlines merges with Northwest Airlines.

2012 - After leaving a trail of destruction across the Caribbean, killing 67 people, Hurricane Sandy strikes the east coast of the United States, causing major flooding, and in some parts snowfall, to several Eastern and Great Lakes states as well as parts of southern Canada. New York City is among the major cities affected. At least 33 people are killed.

2013 - A new underground railway tunnel across the Bosphorus, in Istanbul, is opened.

2015 - The People's Republic of China abandons its one-child policy.

2018 - Lion Air Flight 610 crashes into the Java Sea shortly after take-off from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board.

2018 - Angela Merkel announces her intention to resign as Chancellor of Germany in 2021.

2019 - United Kingdom general election, 2019: The House of Commons of the United Kingdom votes in favour of holding the country's first December general election (on December 12) in 96 years.