On this day in history

1618: Sir Walter Raleigh is executed. After the death of Queen Elizabeth, Raleigh's enemies spread rumors that he was opposed to the accession of King James.
1787: Mozart's opera Don Giovanni opens in Prague.
1927: Russian archaeologist Peter Kozloff apparently uncovers the tomb of Genghis Khan in the Gobi Desert, a claim still in dispute.
1929: Black Tuesday, the most catastrophic day in stock market history, the herald of the Great Depression. 16 million shares were sold at declining prices. By mid-November $30 billion of the $80 billion worth of stocks listed in September will have been wiped out.
1945: The first ball-point pen is sold by Gimbell's department store in New York for a price of $12.
1964: Thieves steal a jewel collection, including the world's largest sapphire, the 565-carat "Star of India" and the 100-carat DeLong ruby--from the Museum of Natural History in New York. The thieves were caught and most of the jewels recovered.
1969: The U.S. Supreme Court orders immediate desegregation, superseding the previous "with all deliberate speed" ruling.
1969: First computer-to-computer link; the link is accomplished through ARPANET, forerunner of the Internet.
1972: Palestinian guerrillas kill an airport employee and hijack a plane, carrying 27 passengers, to Cuba. They force West Germany to release three terrorists who were involved in the Munich Massacre.
1998: The deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record up to that time, Hurricane Mitch, makes landfall in Honduras (in 2005 Hurricane Wilma surpassed it); nearly 11,000 people died and approximately the same number were missing.
1998: John Glenn, at age 77, becomes the oldest person to go into outer space. He is part of the crew of Space Shuttle Discovery, STS-95.
1998: South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission reports condemns both sides on the Apartheid issue for committing atrocities.
2004: For the first time, Osama bin Laden admits direct responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S.; his comments are part of a video broadcast by the Al Jazeera network.
2008: Delta and Northwest airlines merge, forming the world's largest airline.

HistoryNet.com