Today is Thursday, Oct. 29, the 302nd day of 2026 with 63 to follow.

The moon is waning. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Neptune and Saturn. Evening stars are Jupiter, Mercury and Venus.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Scorpio. They include comedian/musician Fanny Brice in 1891; Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels in 1897; political cartoonist Bill Mauldin in 1921; former Liberian President/Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in 1938 (age 88); artist Bob Ross in 1942; musician Denny Laine (Moody Blues/Wings) in 1944; musician Melba Moore in 1945 (age 81); actor Richard Dreyfuss in 1947 (age 79); actor Kate Jackson in 1948 (age 78); actor Dan Castellaneta in 1957 (age 69); journalist David Remnick in 1958 (age 68); actor Finola Hughes in 1959 (age 67); musician Randy Jackson in 1961 (age 65); musician Peter Timmins (Cowboy Junkies) in 1965 (age 61); actor Rufus Sewell in 1967 (age 59); actor Joely Fisher in 1967 (age 59); musician S.A. Martinez (311) in 1969 (age 57); actor Winona Ryder in 1971 (age 55); actor Tracee Ellis Ross in 1972 (age 54); actor Gabrielle Union in 1972 (age 54); actor Jon Abrahams in 1977 (age 49); actor Ben Foster in 1980 (age 46); Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in 1982 (age 44); musician Chris Baio (Vampire Weekend) in 1984 (age 42); actor Derek Theler in 1986 (age 40); musician Tove Lo in 1987 (age 39); NFL player Tank Dell in 1999 (age 27).

On this date in history:

In 1618, Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded in London. He had been accused of plotting against King James I.

In 1787, Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, had its first performance.

In 1901, Leon Czolgosz was electrocuted for the assassination of President William McKinley inside the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y.

In 1923, following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, was proclaimed from the capitol city of Ankara.

In 1923, the musical Runnin' Wild, which introduced the Charleston, opened on Broadway.

In 1929, the sale of 16 million shares marked the collapse of the stock market, setting the stage for the Great Depression. This day became known as "Black Tuesday."

In 1946, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin responded to United Press questions, saying Winston Churchill is the greatest threat to peace and denying tension growing with America.

In 1956, Israeli forces, in a plan later found to have been coordinated with Britain and France, invade the Sinai Peninsula, pushing Egyptian forces back to the Suez Canal. The Suez Crisis, which lasted just over a week, would keep the waterway closed from Oct. 1956 until March 1957.

In 1969, 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.

In 1971, Duane Allman, guitarist and leader of the Allman Brothers band, died in a motorcycle crash in Georgia.

In 1994, a Colorado man was arrested after he sprayed the White House with bullets with an assault rifle. U.S. President Bill Clinton was inside at the time but no one was injured. The gunman was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

In 1998, U.S. Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, who in 1962 became the first U.S. astronaut to orbit Earth, returned to space aboard the shuttle Discovery. At 77, he became the oldest person to travel in space.

In 2004, Osama bin Laden, in a videotape to the American people, said he ordered the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

In 2006, a Boeing 737 crashed near Nigeria's Abuja airport, killing 96 of the 104 people aboard. Officials said the pilot took off after disobeying an air traffic controller and the plane crashed moments later.

In 2012, the storm that began as Hurricane Sandy, which had hit several Caribbean countries, made landfall in New Jersey -- after being reclassified as a still-powerful post-tropical cyclone -- and continued on a destructive path in the Northeast. Differing death tolls were reported in subsequent days. Eventually, the National Hurricane Center reported 72 deaths in the United States, 54 in Haiti, 11 in Cuba, three in the Dominican Republic, two in the Bahamas, two at sea, and one each in Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Canada.

In 2015, China announced it was ending its nearly 40-year one-child policy, allowing couples to have two children without facing punishment.

In 2018, Lion Air Flight JT-610 crashed into the sea 1 minute after it took off from Soekarano-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta, Indonesia, killing 189 people. It was the first of two crashes of a Boeing 737 Max 8, calling attention to problems with the aircraft that would lead to a worldwide grounding in 2019.

In 2022, a stampede at a Halloween festival in Seoul, South Korea, killed 159 people and injured nearly 200 others.

A thought for the day: Women "get more glory than men for comparable feats. But also, women get more notoriety when they crash." -- American aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart