October 29 is the 302nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 63 days remaining until the end of the year.
539 BC – Cyrus the Great (founder of Persian Empire) entered the capital of Babylon and allowed the Jews to return to their land.
312 – Constantine the Great enters Rome after his victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, stages a grand adventus in the city, and is met with popular jubilation. Maxentius' body is fished out of the Tiber and beheaded.
437 – Valentinian III, Western Roman Emperor, marries Licinia Eudoxia, daughter of his cousin Theodosius II, Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople unifying the two branches of the House of Theodosius.
969 – Byzantine troops occupy Antioch, Syria.
1268 – Conradin is executed along with his companion Frederick I, Margrave of Baden by Charles I of Sicily.
1390 – First trial for witchcraft in Paris leading to the death of three people.
1467 – Battle of Brustem: Charles the Bold defeats Prince-Bishopric of Liège.
1591 – Pope Innocent IX is elected.
1611 – Russian homage to the King of Poland, Sigismund III Vasa.
1618 – English adventurer, writer, and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James I of England.
1658 – Second Northern War: Naval forces of the Dutch Republic defeat the Swedes in the Battle of the Sound.
1665 – Portuguese forces defeat the Kingdom of Kongo and decapitate King António I of Kongo, also known as Nvita a Nkanga.
1675 – Leibniz makes the first use of the long s (∫) as a symbol of the integral in calculus.
1787 – Mozart's opera Don Giovanni receives its first performance in Prague.
1792 – Mount Hood (Oregon) is named after Samuel Hood, 1st Viscount Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton who sighted the mountain near the mouth of the Willamette River.
1863 – Eighteen countries meet in Geneva and agree to form the International Red Cross.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Wauhatchie: Forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant repel a Confederate attack led by General James Longstreet. Union forces thus open a supply line into Chattanooga, Tennessee.
1888 – The Convention of Constantinople is signed, guaranteeing free maritime passage through the Suez Canal during war and peace.
1901 – In Amherst, Massachusetts, nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.
1901 – Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of U.S. President William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.
1917 – Ottoman entry into World War I.
1918 – The German High Seas Fleet is incapacitated when sailors mutiny on the night of the 29th-30th, an action which would trigger the German Revolution of 1918–19.
1921 – The Link River Dam, a part of the Klamath Reclamation Project, is completed.
1921 – United States: Second trial of Sacco and Vanzetti in Boston, Massachusetts.
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 – King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy 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.
1941 – The Holocaust: In the Kaunas Ghetto, over 10,000 Jews are shot by German occupiers at the Ninth Fort, a massacre known as the "Great Action".
1943 – The 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 – The Dutch city of Breda is liberated by 1st Polish Armoured Division.
1944 – World War II: The Soviet Red Army enters Hungary.
1948 – Safsaf massacre: Israeli soldiers capture the Palestinian village of Safsaf in the Galilee; after, between 52 and 64 villagers are massacred by the IDF.
1953 – BCPA Flight 304 DC-6 crashes near San Francisco.
1955 – The Soviet battleship Novorossiysk strikes a World War II mine in the harbor at Sevastopol.
1956 – Suez Crisis begins: Israeli forces invade the Sinai Peninsula and push Egyptian forces back toward the Suez Canal.
1957 – Israel's prime minister David Ben-Gurion and five of his ministers are injured when Moshe Dwek throws a grenade into Israel's Knesset.
1959– In Louisville, Kentucky, Cassius Clay (who later takes the name Muhammad Ali) wins his first professional fight.
1960 – An airplane carrying the Cal Poly football team crashes on takeoff in Toledo, Ohio.
1961 – Syria exits from the United Arab Republic.
1964 – The United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar is renamed the United 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 (among them is "Murph the surf") from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
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 – In Macon, Georgia, guitarist Duane Allman is killed in a motorcycle accident.
1972 – The three surviving perpetrators of the Munich massacre are released from prison in exchange for the hostages of hijacked Lufthansa Flight 615.
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.
1985 – Major General Samuel K. Doe is announced the winner of the first multi-party election in Liberia.
1986 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opens the last stretch of the M25 motorway.
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; he is later convicted of trying to kill US President Bill Clinton.
1998 – 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 the STS-95 space shuttle mission.
1998 – While en route from Adana to Ankara, a Turkish Airlines flight with a crew of six 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 is landing in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia to refuel.
1998 – Hurricane Mitch, the second deadlie
1999 – A large cyclone devastates Odisha, India.
2002 – Ho Chi Minh City ITC fire, a fire destroys a luxurious department store where 1500 people are shopping. Over 60 people die and over 100 are unaccounted for. It is the deadliest disaster in Vietnam during peacetime.
2004 – The Arabic-language news network Al Jazeera broadcasts an excerpt from a 2004 Osama bin Laden video in which the terrorist leader first admits direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks and references the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
2005 – Bombings in Delhi, India kill more than 60.
2008 – Delta Air Lines merges with Northwest Airlines, creating the world's largest airline and reducing the number of US legacy carriers to five.
2012 – Hurricane Sandy hits the east coast of the United States, killing 148 directly and 138 indirectly, while leaving nearly $70 billion in damages and causing major power outages.
2015 – China announces the end of One-child policy after 35 years.
