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 seafarer and explorer Sir Walter Raleigh, once a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, is beheaded at Whitehall in London
1658 Battle of the Sound - 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.
1682 William Penn lands in what will become Pennsylvania
1727 Severe earthquake in New England
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.
1811 1st Ohio River steamboat leaves Pittsburgh for New Orleans
1859 Spain declares war on Morocco.
1863 Swiss philanthropist Henri Dunant founds the International Red Cross, after seeing the number of casualties at the Battlle of Solferino in northern Italy, and noting how many die from their untreated wounds
1863 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.
1867 Mail packets "Rhone" and "Wye" capsizes off St Thomas, Virgin Islands
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.
1888 Signing of the Suez Canal Convention in Constantinople - allowing for the canal to be open to all nations in war as well as in 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 US President William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.
1904 In US, 1st intercity trucking service (Colorado City and Snyder, Texas)
1923 "Runnin' Wild" (introducing the Charleston) opens on Broadway
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.
1922 The King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, appoints Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister.
1923 Turkey proclaimed a republic
1929 'Black Tuesday': the continuing 'Wall Street Crash' which began the week before on Thursday, October 24. The 'Great Depression' in the American economy lasts until 1932
1932 French liner Normandie is launched
1939 Golden Gate International Exposition closes (1st closure)
1940 In US, Sec of War Henry L Stimson drew 1st number-158-in 1st peacetime military draft in US history
1941 In the Kaunas Ghetto over 10,000 Jews are shot by German occupiers at the Ninth Fort, a massacre known as the "Great Action".
1942 In the United Kingdom, leading clergymen and political figures hold a public meeting to register outrage over Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews.
1942 16,000 Jews killed in Pinsk, Russia
1944 Breda in the Netherlands is liberated by 1st Polish Armoured Division
1945 Getulio Vargas, president of Brazil, resigns.
1945 The opening of the Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment
1945 1st ball point pen goes on sale, 57 years after it was patented
1948 Safsaf massacre
1955 Soviet battleship "Novorossiisk" strikes WW II mine in Baltic Sea
1956 IDF crosses Egyptian territory in the Sinai
1956 International zone of Tangier returned to Morocco
1956 Suez Crisis begins : Israeli paratroopers drop into the Sinai to open Straits of Tiran
1957 A hand grenade explodes in Israel's Knesset (Parliament) : David Ben Gurion and five of his ministers are injured
1960 Chartered C46 carrying Cal State's football team crashes, kills 16
1960 Muhammad Ali's (Cassius Clay's) 1st professional fight, beats Tunney Hunsaker in 6
1961 Syria exits from the United Arab Republic.
1964 Star of India and other jewels are stolen in NY
1964 In East Africa, the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar to become Tanzania
1967 London criminal Jack McVitie is murdered by the Kray twins, leading to their eventual imprisonment and downfall.
1967 Expo '67 closes in Montreal, Canada
1972 Palestinian terrorists hi-jack a German airliner and demand the release of three arab terrorists captured during the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich
1975 Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe kills first
1975 In Britain, more than 20 people are injured in an IRA bomb attack on a resturant at Mayfair in London
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.
1982 Car maker John DeLorean indicted for drug trafficking, later acquitted
1982 In Australia, Lindy Chamberlain is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of her nine-week-old baby who disappeared on a family trip into the outback. She claims the baby had been killed and eaten by a dingo which had come into the camp and taken the child from their tent
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 In Britain, the opening of the final section of the M25 - the motorway around Greater London designed to relieve traffic congestion within the capita
1987 American boxer Thomas Hearns wins the world middleweight title - the first boxer to win a world title at four different weights
1988 2,000 US anti-abortion protesters arrested for blocking clinics
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.
1988 China announces a herbal male contraceptive
1990 30 die in a (5.7) earthquake in Algeria
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 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 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.
1998 The Gothenburg nightclub fire in Sweden claims 63 lives and injures 200.
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.
2003 Iain Duncan Smith is ousted from his seat as leader of the Tory party in a no-confidnece vote
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 In Argentina for the first time, a woman, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, is elected President.

October 29th 2005

Deadly blasts hit Indian capital

India train derails, killing 100

Iran 'not planning Israel attack'

October 29th 2006

Nigerian sultan among crash dead

Climate change 'hitting Africa'

Nato 'kills 70 Afghan militants'

October 29th 2007

US hands over Karbala to Iraqis

Prison 'likely' in Chad child row

Rudd unveils Barrier Reef plan

October 29th 2008

Deadly car bombs hit Somaliland

Scores dead after Pakistan quake

DR Congo rebel leader calls truce

October 29th 2009

US economy is growing once again

Police arrested over Iraq bombing

Pakistan army targets Uzbek base

Birthdates which occurred on October 29th:

1740 James Boswell Scotland, Samuel Johnson's biographer
1859 Charles Ebbets (namesake of Ebbets Field, Brooklyn)
1873 Guillermo Valencia Colombia, poet/translator/statesman
1875 Marie queen consort of Ferdinand I of Romania (1914-27)
1882 Jean Giraudoux Bellac France, playwright (glantine, Provinciales)
1884 Bela Lugosi horror actor (Dracula, Body Snatcher)
1891 Fanny Brice singing comedienne (Ziegeld Follies, Baby Snooks)
1897 Hope Emerson Hawarden Iowa, actress (I Married Joan, Peter Gunn)
1897 Paul Joseph Goebbels Nazi propagandist
19-- Laura Bonarrigo actress (Cassie Callson-One Life to Live)
19-- Scott Jacek actor (Santa Barbara)
1906 Fredric Brown American writer (US Army in Transition)
1910 Alfred J Ayer England, Neopositivist philosopher/logician
1917 Henry Carlsson Sweden, soccer (Olympic-gold-1948)
1921 Ed Kemmer Reading Pa, actor (Buzz Corey-Space Patrol)
1921 William Henry Mauldin US, political cartoonist (Pulitzer-1945, 59)
1922 Neal Hefti Hastings Neb, orch leader (Kate Smith Show)
1925 Geraldine Brooks NYC, actr (Faraday & Co, Dumplings, Act of Murder)
1926 Jon(athan Stewart) Vickers Prince Albert, Canada, tenor
1934 Robert E Hughes NYC, orch leader (Rich Little Show)
1937 Michael Ponti Freiburg Germany, pianist (Boston Competition 1964)
1945 Melba Moore NYC, singer/actress (Ellis Island)
1947 Richard Dreyfuss Brooklyn NY, actor (Jaws, Nuts)
1948 Kate Jackson Birmingham Ala, actress (Rookies, Charlie's Angels)
1953 Denis Potvin Ottawa Ontario, NY Islander defenseman (Norris trophy)
1959 Jesse Barfield Ill, outfielder (Blue Jays, Yankees, 1986 HR leader)
1960 Finola Hughes actress (Anna-General Hospital, Staying Alive)
1961 Randy Jackson rocker (Jacksons-ABC)
1965 Steven Sweet Wadsworth Ohio, heavy metal artist (Warrant-Cherry Pie)
1971 Winona Ryder [Horowitz], Mn, actress (Heathers, Edward Scissorhand)

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Deaths which occurred on October 29th:
1618 Sir Walter Raleigh is executed in London
1885 George B McClellan Union army general, dies at 58
1901 Leon Czolcosz assassin of President McKinley, is executed
1911 Joseph Pulitzer American newspaperman, dies in Charleston, SC
1947 Frances Cleveland Preston former 1st lady, dies in Balt at 83
1957 Louis B Mayer MGM producer, dies at 71
1963 Adolphe Menjou actor (Front Page, Star is Born), dies at 73
1971 Duane Allman dies at 24 in a motorcycle accident
1975 John Scott Trotter orch leader (George Gobel Show), dies at 67
1981 William O Walker publisher of the Cleveland Call Post, dies at 85
1987 Kamal El Mallakh dies at 57
1987 Woody Herman bandleader/composer (Thundering Herds), dies at 74
1990 William French Smith attorney general (1980), dies at 73 from cancer