Years Ago

Today is Thursday, Oct. 29, the 302nd day of 2009. There are 63 days left in the year. On this date in 1929 — known as “Black Tuesday” — Wall Street crashes, heralding the beginning of the Great Depression.

In 1618, Sir Walter Raleigh, the English courtier, military adventurer and poet, is executed in London. In 1901, President William McKinley’s assassin, Leon Czolgosz, is electrocuted. In 1923, the Republic of Turkey is proclaimed. In 1940, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson draws the first number — 158 — in the lottery for America’s first peacetime military draft. In 1956, during the Suez Canal crisis, Israel invades Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” premieres as NBC’s nightly TV newscast. In 1966, the National Organization for Women is formally organized during a conference in Washington, D.C. In 1967, Expo 67 in Montreal closes after six months. In 1979, on the 50th anniversary of the great stock market crash, anti-nuclear protesters try but fail to shut down the New York Stock Exchange. In 1994, gunman Francisco Martin Duran fires more than two dozen shots from a semiautomatic rifle at the White House. (Duran is later convicted of trying to assassinate President Bill Clinton and is sentenced to 40 years in prison.) In 1998, Sen. John Glenn, at age 77, roars back into space aboard the shuttle Discovery, retracing the trail he’d blazed for America’s astronauts 36 years earlier.

October 29, 1984: Frank S. Pavliga and his son, Frank M., of Canfield built a replica of 1929 Pietenpol Air Camper, which is powered by a 40 hp Model A Ford engine and cruises at 65 mph. The red and yellow “Sky Gypsy” is based at Barber Field in Alliance.

The International Union of Electrical Workers reaches a tentative three-year contract that covers 24,000 IUE employees at General Motors, including those at the Packard Electric Division. The contract provides improvements in pay, job security and paid absence days.

The race for Mahoning County prosecutor between incumbent Vince Gilmartin and challenger Gary VanBrocklin appears to be a dead heat in campaign fund-raising, with Gilmartin raising $35,040 and VanBrocklin, $34,217.

October 29, 1969: The final toll in the Stop 5 battle for control of steel hauling between local Teamsters and the Fraternal Association of Steel Haulers is one dead and eight injured. Pronounced dead at South Side Hospital was John Gorlsine of Cleveland, a Teamster.

Two Youngstown policemen, Vincent Iannazone, 49, and Ralph Balestra, 44, are injured when their cruiser is struck broadside at E. Dewey and Gibson avenues.

Earnie Shaver, National AAU boxing champion from Warren, joins the Dean Chance-Blackie Gennaro boxing stable at the official signing at Alberini’s restaurant. Chance is a pitcher with the Minnesota Twins.

October 29, 1959: Mayor Frank X. Kryzan appeals to city voters to support all four issues on the ballot, a school levy, the West Branch Reservoir levy, a county home levy and a Mill Creek Park levy. Democratic mayoral candidate Frank R. Franko pledges “good clean, strict government” if the Democratic party wins in Youngstown’s municipal election.

Republican mayoral candidate Edward Gilronan, tells an overflow crowd at Krakusy Hall that “The Republicans can win next week’s election if you people get out the vote.”

October 29, 1934: Robert Bowen, 24, dies of a gunshot wound suffered after what a Youngstown bus driver said was an argument over the 10-cent fare.

Clerks at more than 300 A&P stores in Cleveland that have been padlocked by the company appeal to President Franklin Roosevelt for aid in the labor dispute.

An unruly crowd of 50,000 gives Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd the largest funeral in Oklahoma history. Afterward, fights break out over floral souvenirs as every one of four carloads of blossoms brought to the small graveyard was taken away.