539 BC – Cyrus the Great (founder of Persian Empire) entered 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 – Conradie, 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 leading to the death of three people.
1422 – Charles VII of France becomes king in succession to his father Charles VI of France though he isn't officially crowned king until 1429.
1467 – Battle of Brustem: Charles the Bold defeats 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 – Battle of Ambuila, in which Portuguese forces defeat the forces of the Kingdom of Kongo and decapitated king António I of Kongo, also called Nvita a Nkanga.
1675 – Leibniz makes the first use of the long s (∫) as a symbol of the integral in calculus.
1777 – John Hancock resigns his position as president of the Continental Congress, due to a prolonged illness.
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 – In Pittsburgh, the first Ohio River steamboat leaves for New Orleans.
1858 – The first store opens in a small frontier town in Colorado Territory that a month later will take the name of Denver in a shameless ploy to curry favor with Kansas Territorial Governor James W. Denver.
1858 – Rowland Hussey Macy opened his first New York store at Sixth Avenue and 14th Street in Manhattan.
1863 – Eighteen countries meet in Geneva and agree to form the International Red Cross.
1863 – American Civil War: The Battle of Wauhatchie (also known as the Battle of Brown's Ferry) concludes as Union General Ulysses S. Grant's troops open a supply line into Chattanooga, Tennessee, when they drive away a Confederate attack by General James Longstreet.
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 – Capital punishment: Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of U.S. President William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.
1915 – Jane Addams, a leading American social activist, writes to United States President Woodrow Wilson, warning him of the potential dangers of readying the country to enter the First World War.
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 – Second trial of Sacco and Vanzetti in the United States of America.
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 – Black Tuesday hits Wall Street as investors trade 16,410,030 shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors, and stock tickers ran hours behind because the machinery could not handle the tremendous volume of trading. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into 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".
1942 – The Holocaust: In the United Kingdom, leading British clergymen and political figures hold a public meeting to register their outrage over the persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany.
1944 – The city of Breda in the Netherlands is liberated by 1st Polish Armoured Division.
1944 – World War II: The Soviet Red Army enters Hungary.
1945 – Getúlio Vargas, president of Brazil, resigns.
1948 – Safsaf massacre: Israeli soldiers capture Palestinian village of Safsaf in the Galilee and massacre villagers after they surrender.
1948 – A killer industrial smog claimed elderly victims in Donora, Pennsylvania. Over a five-day period, the smog killed about 20 people and made thousands more seriously ill.
1953 – BCPA Flight 304 DC-6 crashes near San Francisco. Pianist William Kapell is among the 19 killed.
1955 – The Soviet battleship Novorossiysk strikes a World War II mine in the harbor at Sevastopol.
1956 – Israeli armed forces push into Egypt toward the Suez Canal, initiating the Suez Crisis. They would soon be joined by French and British forces, creating a serious Cold War problem in the Middle East.
1956 – The Tangier Protocol is signed: The international city Tangier is reintegrated into Morocco.
1957 – Israel's prime minister David Ben-Gurion and five of his ministers are injured when 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.
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 – 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.
1969 – The Supreme Court orders an end to all school segregation immediately.
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 (Duran is 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: Nearly four decades after he became the first American to orbit the Earth, Senator John Hershel Glenn, Jr., is launched into space again as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Discovery. At 77 years of age, Glenn was the oldest human ever to travel in space. During the nine-day mission, he served as part of a NASA study on health problems associated with aging.
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 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 deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history, makes landfall in Honduras.
1998 – The Gothenburg discothèque fire in Sweden kills 63 and injures 200.
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 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 – unofficially known as Superstorm Sandy – was making landfall, affecting millions of people along the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Northeast coasts. It was to be the deadliest and most destructive hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, as well as the second-costliest hurricane in United States history, killing 148 directly and 138 indirectly, while leaving nearly $70 billion in damages and causing major power outages.
2013 – Turkey opens a sea tunnel connecting Europe and Asia across the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul.
2014 – A mudslide in south-central Sri Lanka kills at least 16 people and more than 100 people missing.
Saints' Days and Holy Days
Abraham of Rostov
Blessed Chiara Badano
Douai Martyrs
Gaetano Errico
James Hannington (Anglicanism)
Narcissus of Jerusalem
Anglican, Episcopal, Lutheran
October 29 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Virgin Martyr Anastasia the Roman (258) (See also: October 28 - in the West)
Martyrs Claudius, Asterius, Neon, and Theonilla, of Aegae in Cilicia (285)
Martyr Sabbas Stratelates
Martyrs Cyril, Menas, and Menaeus, by the sword
Venerable Abramius the Recluse (360) and his niece St. Mary of Mesopotamia (397)
Martyr Melitene of Marcionopolis, by beheading
Venerable Anna of Constantinople, known as "Euphemianus" (826)
Saint Rostislav, Prince of Moravia, Czechoslovakia (870)
Saint Serapion of Zarzma monastery, Georgia (900)
Martyr Vassa
Saint Diomedes of Lefkosia.
Saint Eusebia, a virgin-martyr in Bergamo in Italy and niece of St Domnio,
martyred under Maximian Herculeus (late 3rd century)
Martyrs Hyacinth, Quintus, Felician and Lucius, at Lucania in the south of Italy
Saint Kennera (Cinnera, Cannera), an anchoress
in Kirk-Kinner in Galloway in Scotland (4th century)
Saint Terence of Metz, sixteenth Bishop of Metz in the east of France (520)
Saint Theodore (Theudar), a priest and disciple of St Caesarius of Arles,
also abbot of one of the monasteries of Vienne in France (c. 575)
Venerable Ermelinda (Ermelindis), hermitess (c. 595)
Saint Colman of Kilmacduagh, a hermit in Arranmore and Burren in Co. Clare,
founder of the monastery of Kilmacduagh (c. 632)
Saint Bond (Baldus), born in Spain, he became a hermit in Sens in France (7th century)
Saint Sigolinus (Sighelm), abbot of Stavelot and Malmédy in Belgium (c. 670)
Saint John of Autun, a Bishop venerated in Autun, Confessor
Saint Stephen of Cajazzo, Abbot of San Salvatore Maggiore, and Bishop of Cajazzo (1023)
Venerable Abramius of Rostov, Archimandrite, Wonderworker (1073)
Venerable Abramius, recluse of the Kiev Caves (14th century)
New Martyr Athanasius of Sparta, at Mudanya (1653)
Martyr Timothy of Esphigmenou Monastery, Mt. Athos (1820)
New Hieromartyrs Nicholas Probatov, priest (1918), and with him:
Cosma, Victor Krasnov, Naum, Philip, John, Paul, Andrew, Paul,
Basil, Alexis, John and Virgin-martyr Agatha (1918)
New Hieromartyr John Rudinsky, priest (1930)
New Hieromartyr Eugene Ivashko, priest (1937)
Virgin-martyr Anastasia Lebedev (after 1937)
New Hieromartyr Leonid Muravev, Priest (1941)
Commemoration of the deposition of of the Honorable Head
of the Holy Glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John
