On Oct. 29, 1901, President William McKinley’s assassin, Leon Czolgosz, was electrocuted.
In 1929 Black Tuesday descended upon the New York Stock Exchange; prices collapsed amid panic selling and thousands of investors were wiped out as America’s Great Depression began.
In 1956 Israel launched an invasion of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula during the Suez Canal crisis.
In 1964 thieves made off with the Star of India and other gems from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. (The Star and most of the other gems were recovered; three men were convicted in the case.)
In 1966 the National Organization for Women was founded.
In 1967 the musical “Hair” opened off-Broadway.
In 1987 jazz great Woody Herman died in Los Angeles at 74.
In 1994 Francisco Martin Duran fired more than two dozen shots at the White House. (Duran, 26, was later convicted of trying to assassinate President Bill Clinton and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.)
In 1998, at age 77, Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) roared back into space aboard the shuttle Discovery, retracing the trail he blazed as an astronaut 36 years earlier.
In 2004 Osama bin Laden, in a videotaped statement, directly admitted for the first time that he had ordered the Sept. 11 attacks and told America “the best way to avoid another Manhattan” was to stop threatening Muslims’ security.
