Today in History, October 29th
On October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday hit Wall Street and the Great Depression loomed. Plus ARPANET's first link and Superstorm Sandy's landfall.
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October 29 is best known for Black Tuesday in 1929, the worst day of the Wall Street crash that ushered in the Great Depression. The date also saw the first host-to-host link on ARPANET, the internet’s ancestor, in 1969 and Superstorm Sandy’s landfall in New Jersey in 2012.
The big story: Black Tuesday on Wall Street (1929)
The warning came five days early. On Thursday, October 24, a record 12.9 million shares traded as panic hit the New York Stock Exchange. Leading bankers stepped in and bought big blocks of stock, and by Friday prices had steadied a bit. It didn’t last. Selling picked up again on Monday, and on Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the floor gave way. About 16.4 million shares changed hands, billions of dollars in value vanished, and the ticker tape ran hours behind the trading. The market had peaked that August after years of wild speculation that pushed prices far above what companies were really worth, even as production slipped and unemployment rose. The crash exposed those cracks. By 1932, stocks were worth only about a fifth of their summer 1929 value. By 1933, nearly half of U.S. banks had failed and about 15 million Americans, roughly 30 percent of the workforce, were out of work.
More events on October 29
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1618 | Adventurer and writer Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded in London on a treason charge dating back 15 years (Old Style). |
| 1918 | Sailors of Germany’s High Seas Fleet refused orders for a last-ditch attack on the British navy, starting a mutiny. |
| 1923 | The Republic of Turkey was established, with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as its first president. |
| 1956 | Israeli forces attacked Egypt in the Sinai Peninsula and pushed toward the Suez Canal, starting the Suez Crisis. |
| 1965 | The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published, nine months after his assassination. |
| 1969 | UCLA made the first host-to-host connection on ARPANET, linking to the Stanford Research Institute. The first try crashed after the letters “L” and “O.” |
| 1998 | John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, returned to space aboard the shuttle Discovery at age 77, then the oldest person to fly in space. |
| 2003 | An 18-year-old LeBron James made his NBA debut and scored 25 points, though his Cleveland Cavaliers lost to the Sacramento Kings. |
| 2012 | Superstorm Sandy made landfall in New Jersey near Brigantine. The storm caused at least 147 deaths. |
| 2015 | China announced the end of its one-child policy after 35 years, allowing couples to have two children. |
Born on October 29
- 1891: Fanny Brice, singer and comedian who starred in the Ziegfeld Follies, born in New York City.
- 1942: Bob Ross, painter and television host of The Joy of Painting, born in Daytona Beach, Florida.
- 1947: Richard Dreyfuss, Academy Award-winning film actor, born in Brooklyn, New York.
Keep reading
Sources
- Stock market crashes, History.com
- This Day in History: October 29, History.com
- On This Day: October 29, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Internet History of 1960s, Computer History Museum
- John Glenn returns to space, History.com
- Kemal Atatürk, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Fanny Brice, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Bob Ross, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Richard Dreyfuss, Encyclopaedia Britannica
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I think they called this day Black Tuesday in 1929. After losing all their money on bad wagers, the majority of the nation went on to compound their initial folly of irrational exuberance by electing a socialist statist president named FDR who enacted the very legislation—social security later expanded to medicare and then medicaid and then most recently the Medicare Modernization act—that would after 240 years utterly bankrupt America. Learn to speak Chinese and hope you like Ramen noodles.