Today’s highlights

On Oct. 29, 1929, ‘Black Tuesday’ descended on the New York Stock Exchange. Prices collapsed amid panicked selling and thousands of investors were wiped out as America’s Great Depression began.

On this date

1940: A blindfolded Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson drew the first number — 158 — from a glass bowl in America’s first peacetime military draft.

1960: A chartered plane carrying the California Polytechnic State University football team crashed on takeoff from Toledo, Ohio, killing 22 people.

1998: Sen. John Glenn, at age 77, returned to space aboard the shuttle Discovery, retracing the trail he had blazed as the first American to orbit the Earth 36 years earlier.

2012: Superstorm Sandy slammed ashore in New Jersey and slowly marched inland, devastating coastal communities and causing widespread power outages; the storm and its aftermath were blamed for at least 182 deaths in the U.S.

2015: China announced plans to abolish its one-child policy, allowing all families to have two children for the first time in more than 35 years.

2022: More than 150 people were killed and dozens more injured in South Korea after being crushed by a large crowd pushing forward on a narrow street during Halloween festivities in Seoul.

Today’s birthdays

Actor Richard Dreyfuss is 77. Actor Dan Castellaneta (TV: “The Simpsons”) is 67. Actor Winona Ryder is 53. Olympic gold medal swimmer Amanda Beard is 43.