Mussolini, Black Tuesday, and the 1940 Draft: What Happened on October 29

In 1929, $14 billion in stock value vanished from the New York Stock Exchange in a single day of panic selling. The collapse of prices on that October 29, known as Black Tuesday, wiped out thousands of investors and triggered the Great Depression in the United States.

The date marks other major shifts in global politics and military history. On October 29, 1922, King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy appointed Benito Mussolini as prime minister. This move solidified the power of the fascist leader who would rule the country until 1943, when he was dismissed following the Allied invasion. Mussolini was later executed by partisans in 1945.

In 1956, the Suez Crisis erupted when Israel invaded Egypt to seize control of the Suez Canal. The operation was backed by France and Britain after Egypt nationalized the waterway. The conflict ended with a withdrawal of forces after U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration refused to support the effort and threatened sanctions.

U.S. domestic military history also pivoted on this date in 1940. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, blindfolded, drew the number 158 from a glass bowl to begin the first peacetime military draft in American history.

The 20th century saw other critical events on October 29. In 1618, Sir Walter Raleigh, an English courtier and poet, was executed in London for conspiring against King James I. In 1787, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Don Giovanni premiered in Prague. In 1998, Senator John Glenn returned to space aboard the shuttle Discovery at age 77, retracing his 1962 orbit.

More recently, October 29 has been the date of significant disasters. In 2012, Superstorm Sandy made landfall in New Jersey, causing widespread power outages and at least 182 deaths in the U.S. In 2018, a Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX crashed after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. A similar crash involving Ethiopian Airlines five months later led to a worldwide grounding of the aircraft type due to flight-control system issues.

In 2022, a crowd crush during Halloween festivities in Seoul, South Korea, killed more than 150 people and injured dozens. In 2024, Hezbollah named cleric Naim Kassem as its new leader following the death of Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb in late September.

Other notable birthdays on this date include Nobel Peace Prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, now 88, and Olympic gold medalist Denis Potvin, 73. Actor Kate Jackson turns 78, while actress Winona Ryder is 55.