Today in History. October 29. In 1929, ‘Black Tuesday’ descended on the New York Stock Exchange, heralding the beginning of America’s Great Depression. In 1618, Sir Walter Raleigh, the English courtier, military adventurer and poet, was executed in London for treason. In 1940, Secretary of War Henry Stimson drew the first number from a glass bowl in America’s first peacetime military draft. In 1956, the Suez Crisis began when Israeli forces, backed by Great Britain and France, pushed into Egypt toward the Suez Canal. In 1998, Sen. John Glenn, at age 77, returned to space aboard the shuttle Discovery. In 2015, China announced plans to abolish its one-child policy, allowing all families to have two children for the first time in over 35 years. In 2017, all but 10 members of the Houston Texans took a knee during the national anthem. In 2018, a Boeing jet operated by the Indonesian airline Lion Air crashed in the Java Sea minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. In 2022, more than 150 people were killed and dozens more injured in South Korea after being crushed by a large crowd pushing forward on a narrow street during Halloween festivities in Seoul.