• 529 BC - The international day of Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, who declared the first charter of human rights in the world also known as Cyrus Cylinder.
• 437 - Valentinian III, Western Roman Emperor, marries Licinia Eudoxia, daughter of his cousin Theodosius II, Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople. This unifies the two branches of the House of Theodosius
• 969 - Byzantine troops occupy Antioch Syria
• 1268 - Conradin, the last legitimate male heir of the Hohenstaufen dynasty of Kings of Germany and Holy Roman Emperors, is executed along with his companion Frederick I, Margrave of Baden by Charles I of Sicily, a political rival and ally to the hostile Roman Catholic church.
• 1390 - First trial for witchcraft in Paris.
• 1422 - Charles VII of France becomes king in succession to his father Charles VI of France
• 1467 - Battle of Brusthem: Charles the Bold defeats Liege
• 1618 - English adventurer, writer, and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James I of England.
• 1658 - Action of 29 October 1658 (Naval battle)
• 1665 - Battle of Ambuila, where Portuguese forces defeated the forces of the Kingdom of Kongo and decapitated king Antonio I of Kongo, also called Nvita a Nkanga..
• 1675 - Leibniz makes the first use of the long s, ∫, for integral.
• 1787 - Mozart's opera Don Giovanni receives its first performance in Prague.
• 1792 - Mount Hood (Oregon) is named after the British naval officer Alexander Arthur Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton who spotted the mountain near the mouth of the Willamette River.
• 1859 - Spain declares war on Morocco.
• 1863 - Sixteen countries meeting in Geneva agree to form the International Red Cross.
• 1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Wauhatchie - Forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant ward off a Confederate attack led by General James Longstreet. Union forces thus open a supply line into Chattanooga, Tennessee.
• 1881 - Judge (U.S. magazine) first published.
• 1886 - The ticker-tape parade is invented in New York City when office workers spontaneously throw ticker tape into the streets as the Statue of Liberty is dedicated.
• 1901 - In Amherst, Massachusetts nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.
• 1901 - Capital punishment: Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of US President William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.
• 1913 - Floods in El Salvador kill thousands.
• 1921 - The Link River Dam, a part of the Klamath Reclamation Project, is completed.
• 1921 - Second trial of Sacco and Vanzetti in USA.
• 1921 - The Harvard University football team loses to Centre College, ending a 25 game winning streak. This is considered one of the biggest upsets in college football.
• 1922 - The King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, appoints Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister.
• 1923 - Turkey becomes a republic following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.
• 1929 - The New York Stock Exchange crashes in what will be called the Crash of '29 or "Black Tuesday," ending the Great Bull Market of the 1920s and beginning the Great Depression.
• 1942 - Holocaust: In the United Kingdom, leading clergymen and political figures hold a public meeting to register outrage over Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews.
• 1944 - Breda in the Netherlands is liberated by 1st Polish Armoured Division
• 1945 - Getulio Vargas, president of Brazil, resigns.
• 1948 - Safsaf massacre
• 1955 - The Soviet battleship Novorossiisk strikes a World War II mine in the harbor at Sevastopol.
• 1956 - Suez Crisis begins: Israel forces invade the Sinai Peninsula and push Egyptian forces back toward the Suez Canal.
• 1956 - Tangier Protocol signed: The international city Tangier is reintegrated into Morocco.
• 1957 - Israel's prime minister David Ben Gurion and five of his ministers are injured as a hand grenade is tossed into Israel's parliament, the Knesset.
• 1960 - In Louisville, Kentucky, Cassius Clay (who later takes the name Muhammad Ali) wins his first professional fight.
• 1961 - Syria exits from the United Arab Republic.
• 1964 - Tanganika and Zanzibar join to form the Republic of Tanzania.
• 1964 - A collection of irreplaceable gems, including the 565 carat (113 g) Star of India, is stolen by a group of thieves including Jack Murphy from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
• 1967 - London criminal Jack McVitie is murdered by the Kray twins, leading to their eventual imprisonment and downfall.
• 1967 - Montreal's World Fair, Expo 67, closes with over 50 million visitors.
• 1969 - The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.
• 1971 - Vietnam War: Vietnamization - The total number of American troops still in Vietnam drops to a record low of 196,700 (the lowest level since January 1966).
• 1980 - Demonstration flight of a secretly modified C-130 for an Iran hostage crisis rescue attempt ends in crash landing at Eglin Air Force Base's Duke Field, Florida leading to cancellation of Operation Credible Sport.
• 1983 - Over 500,000 people demonstrate against cruise missiles in The Hague, The Netherlands.
• 1985 - Major General Samuel K. Doe is announced the winner of the first multiparty election in Liberia.
• 1986 - British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opens the last stretch of the M25 motorway.
• 1988 - Pakistan's General Rahimuddin Khan resigns from his post as Governor of Sindh, following the efforts by President of Pakistan Ghulam Ishaq Khan to limit the powers Rahimuddin had accumulated.
• 1991 - The American Galileo spacecraft makes its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid.
• 1994 - Francisco Martin Duran fires over two dozen shots at the White House (Duran was later convicted of trying to kill US President Bill Clinton).
• 1998 - Apartheid: In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission presents its report, which condemns both sides for committing atrocities.
• 1998 - Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off on STS-95 with 77-year old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space.
• 1998 - ATSC HDTV broadcasting in the United States is inaugurated with the launch of STS-95 space shuttle mission.
• 1998 - While en route from Adana to Ankara, a Turkish Airlines flight with a crew of 6 and 33 passengers is hijacked by a Kurdish militant who orders the pilot to fly to Switzerland. The plane instead lands in Ankara after the pilot tricked the hijacker into thinking that he was landing in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia to refuel.
• 1998 - Hurricane Mitch, the second deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history, made landfall in Honduras.
• 1999 - Deadliest Indian Ocean tropical cyclone hits Orissa, India. This event was known as 1999 Orissa cyclone ever since.
• 2002 - Ho Chi Minh City ITC Inferno, a fire destroys a luxurious department store with 1500 people shopping. Over 60 people died and over 100 are missing. It is the deadliest disaster in Vietnam during peacetime.
• 2004 - The Arabic news network Al Jazeera broadcasts an excerpt from a video of Osama bin Laden in which the terrorist leader first admits direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks and references the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
• 2004 - In Rome, European heads of state sign the Treaty and Final Act establishing the first European Constitution.
• 2005 - 29 October 2005 Delhi bombings kill more than 60.
• 2007 - Argentina elects its first female president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

Births