Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is Oct. 29. The second potential terror attack warning in less than a month was issued to a jittery nation by the Justice Department on this date in 2001, Nothing specific, said Attorney General John Ashcroft, but the intelligence leading up to the warning was considered credible. Advertisement This is the anniversary of the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Only four days earlier, President Herbert Hoover had declared the country's economy "on a sound and prosperous basis." But on Oct. 29, 1929, more than 16 million shares of stocks were dumped and billions of dollars lost, causing prices on the New York Stock Exchange to collapse --- and setting the stage for the Great Depression, which lasted until 1939 and involved North America, Europe and other industrialized nations. At the height of the depression, in 1932, one out of every four Americans was unemployed. Former astronaut and then-Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, became the oldest person ever to travel in space when he blasted off into orbit as part of the crew of the shuttle Discovery on this date in 1998. Glenn was 77. 36 years earlier, in 1962 aboard Friendship 7, Glenn had been the first American to orbit the Earth. Advertisement It was on this date in 1969 that the first connection on what would become the Internet was made when bits of data flowed between computers at UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute. This was the beginning of ARPANET, the precurser to the Internet developed by the Department of Defense. It was on this date in 1618 that Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded in London. He had been charged with plotting against King James I. On this date in 1901, Leon Czolgosz was electrocuted for the assassination of President McKinley the previous month. And on this date in 1994, a Colorado man was arrested after he sprayed the White House with bullets from an assault rifle. President Clinton was inside at the time, but neither he nor anyone else was injured. And the Roaring '20s dance craze known as the Charleston was introduced to the public on this date in 1923 when the musical "Runnin' Wild" opened on Broadway. We now return you to the present, already in progress.
