Today in History: October 29, ‘Black Tuesday’ signals start of Great Depression

Today is Thursday, Oct. 29, the 302nd day of 2026. There are 63 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Oct. 29, 1929, ‘Black Tuesday’ descended on the New York Stock Exchange. Stock prices collapsed amid panicked selling, $14 billion in value was lost, and thousands of investors were wiped out, triggering America’s Great Depression.

Also on this date:

In 1618, Sir Walter Raleigh, the English courtier, military adventurer and poet, was executed in London for allegedly conspiring against King James I.

In 1787, the opera “Don Giovanni” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had its world premiere in Prague.

In 1922, Benito Mussolini, the founder of fascism, was appointed Italian prime minister by King Victor Emmanuel III. (He was dismissed by Emmanuel in 1943 after the Allied invasion of Italy and was executed by partisans in 1945).

In 1940, a blindfolded Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson drew the first number — 158 — from a glass bowl in America’s first peacetime military draft.

In 1956, the Suez Crisis began as Israel invaded Egypt to seize control of the vital waterway, backed by France and Britain, after its nationalization by Egypt. (Their forces eventually withdrew after U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration refused to back the effort and threatened sanctions).

In 1960, a chartered plane carrying the California Polytechnic State University football team crashed on takeoff from Toledo, Ohio, killing 22 of 48 people on board.

In 1998, Sen. John Glenn, at age 77, returned to space aboard the shuttle Discovery, retracing the trail he had blazed as the first American to orbit the Earth in the Friendship 7 Mercury space capsule in 1962.

In 2012, Superstorm Sandy slammed ashore in New Jersey and slowly marched inland, devastating coastal communities and causing widespread power outages; the storm and its aftermath were blamed for at least 182 deaths in the U.S.

In 2018, a Boeing 737 MAX operated by the Indonesian airline Lion Air crashed after takeoff from Jakarta, Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board. (Five months later, an Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max crashed after takeoff from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, killing all 157 people on board; the 737 MAX was grounded worldwide, and a flight-control system was implicated in the crashes.)

In 2022, more than 150 people were killed and dozens more were injured in South Korea after being crushed by a large crowd pushing forward on a narrow street during Halloween festivities in Seoul.

In 2024, Hezbollah said it had chosen cleric Naim Kassem to lead the Lebanese militant group after the killing of its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb in late September.

Today’s Birthdays: Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is 88. Actor Richard Dreyfuss is 79. Actor Kate Jackson is 78. Hockey Hall of Famer Denis Potvin is 73. Actor Dan Castellaneta (TV: “The Simpsons”) is 69. Actor Joely Fisher is 59. Actor Rufus Sewell is 58. Actor Winona Ryder is 55. Actor Tracee Ellis Ross is 54. Actor Gabrielle Union is 54. Olympic gold medal bobsledder Vonetta Flowers is 53. Actor Ben Foster is 46. Olympic gold medal swimmer Amanda Beard is 45. Race car driver Lance Stroll is 28.