October 29

A quick look at Today in History, check out some Celebrity Birthdays, and find out what Days of the Year to celebrate.

TODAY IN HISTORY:

1682 – William Penn landed at what is now Chester, PA. He was the founder of Pennsylvania.

1833 – The first college fraternity was founded.

1863 – The International Committee of the Red Cross was founded.

1901 – Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President William McKinley, was electrocuted.

1929 – The New York Stock Exchange crashed in what is called the Crash of ’29 or “Black Tuesday”, ending the Great Bull Market of the 1920’s and beginning the Great Depression.

1940 – The first peacetime military draft began in the United States.

1945 – The first ballpoint pens to be made commercially went on sale at Gimbels Department Store in New York, NY. They cost $12.50 each.

1947 – The first modern weather experiment, a cloud seeding operation dropped rain on New Hampshire and put out a forest fire.

1956 – TV’s “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” premiered on NBC. The show replaced “The Camel News Caravan.”

1959 – General Mills became the first corporation to use close-circuit television.

1960 – In Louisville, KY. Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) won his first professional fight.

1966 – The National Organization for Women was founded.

1969 – The first ever computer-to-computer link was established on ARPANET, the precursor to the internet. The message was supposed to say “login”, but the system crashed after just the first two letters.

1969 – The Supreme Court ordered an end to all school segregation “at once.”

1974 – President Gerald Ford signed a new law forbidding discrimination in credit applications on the basis of sex or marital status

1977 – A Boeing 747 set the speed record for flying around the world over the North and South Poles. The plane had an average speed of 487 mph.

1991 – The U.S. Galileo spacecraft made its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid.

1993 – The very first “Got Milk” commercial aired.

1993 – The Tim Burton clay-mation film “The Nightmare Before Christmas” premiered in theaters.

1994 – Francisco Martin Duran, of Colorado Springs, CO, fired more than two dozen shots from a semi-automatic rifle at the White House from Pennsylvania Ave. (He was later convicted of trying to assassinate President Bill Clinton.)

1998 – ATSC HDTV broadcasting in the United States was inaugurated with the launch of STS-96 Space Shuttle mission.

1998 – The Space Shuttle Discovery blasted off with 77 year old John Glenn on board. (In 1962 he became the first American to orbit the Earth.) He became the oldest person to go into space.

2002 – The Federal Government filed charges against Washington, DC, sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad.

2008 – Delta Air Lines merged with Northwest Airlines to create the world’s largest airline while reducing the number of U.S. legacy carriers to five.

2012 – Hurricane Sandy made landfall in Atlantic City, NJ and was re-classified as a post-tropical cyclone. New Jersey, New York and Connecticut were hardest hit. A total of eight-million people lost power, 148 died directly and 138 indirectly due to the storm. An estimated $82 billion in damages made Sandy the second costliest hurricane in American history at the time (after Katrina).

2013 – The largest recorded chicken nugget weighed in at 51.1 pounds.

2014 – The smartwatch Microsoft Band was released.

2015 – China announced the end of their one child policy after 35 years.

BIRTHDAYS:

Ralph Bakshi – 87 years old (1938) – Director, producer, and screenwriter

Peter Stampfel – 87 years old (1938) – Fiddle player, violinist, and singer-songwriter

Connie Mack III – 85 years old (1940) – Lawyer and politician

Ron Maag – 80 years old (1945) – Businessman and politician

Melba Moore – 80 years old (1945) – Singer-songwriter and actress

Richard Dreyfuss – 78 years old (1947) – Actor and activist

Kate Jackson – 77 years old (1948) – Actress, director, and producer

Raphael Carl Lee – 76 years old (1949) – Surgeon and academic

James Williamson – 76 years old (1949) – Guitarist, songwriter, and producer

Dirk Kempthorne – 74 years old (1951) – Businessman and politician, 49th United States Secretary of the Interior

Marcia Fudge – 73 years old (1952) – Lawyer and politician

Wilfredo Gómez – 69 years old (1956) – Puerto Rican-American boxer

Dan Castellaneta – 68 years old (1957) – Actor, voice artist, comedian, singer and producer

David Remnick – 67 years old (1958) – Journalist and author

Danny Vranes – 67 years old (1958) – Basketball player

Jesse Barfield – 66 years old (1959) – Baseball player and coach

Michael Carter – 65 years old (1960) – Football player and athlete

Randy Jackson – 64 years old (1961) – Singer-songwriter and dancer

Joel Otto – 64 years old (1961) – Ice hockey player and coach

Damian Chapa – 62 years old (1963) – Actor

Gerald Morris – 62 years old (1963) – Author

Tyler Collins – 60 years old (1965) – Singer-songwriter and actress

Michael Passons – 60 years old (1965) – Singer-songwriter

Mary Bucholtz – 59 years old (1966) – Linguist and academic

Joely Fisher – 58 years old (1967) – Actress and director

Chris Verene – 56 years old (1969) – Photographer

Daniel J. Bernstein – 54 years old (1971) – Mathematician, cryptologist, and academic

Winona Ryder – 54 years old (1971) – Actress and producer

Tracee Ellis Ross – 53 years old (1972) – Actress and producer

Gabrielle Union – 53 years old (1972) – Actress and producer

Vonetta Flowers – 52 years old (1973) – Bobsledder, sprinter, and long jumper

R. A. Dickey – 51 years old (1974) – Baseball player

Baba Ali – 50 years old (1975) – Iranian-American comedian, games developer, businessman, and actor

Joy Osmanski – 50 years old (1975) – Actress

Milena Govich – 49 years old (1976) – Actress, singer, and dancer

Jon Abrahams – 48 years old (1977) – Actor

Travis Henry – 47 years old (1978) – Football player

Ben Foster – 45 years old (1980) – Actor

Amanda Beard – 44 years old (1981) – Swimmer

Maurice Clarett – 42 years old (1983) – Football player

Dana Eveland – 42 years old (1983) – Baseball player

Chris Baio – 41 years old (1984) – Bass player

Nataly Dawn – 39 years old (1986) – Singer

Derek Theler – 39 years old (1986) – Actor and model

Andy Dalton – 38 years old (1987) – Football player

Janoris Jenkins – 37 years old (1988) – Football player

India Eisley – 32 years old (1993) – Actress

Danielle Hunter – 31 years old (1994) – Football player

TODAY IS:

Today's special observances are temporarily unavailable. Please check back soon.

For additional information check out websites like: www.on-this-day.com, www.born-today.com, www.famousbirthdays.com, www.daysoftheyear.com, and www.nationaldaycalendar.com.