October 29 is:
Hermit Day recognizes the hermit in all of us. A hermit is a person who lives, to some degree, in seclusion from society. No matter how social a person is, everyone needs to take a break from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
National Oatmeal Day
The portrait of the Quaker man on the Quaker® Oats package has been updated just three times since its creation in 1877, once in 1946, again in 1957 and, most recently, in 1972.
Anniversary of the death of Sir Walter Raleigh (October 29, 1618), English military and naval commander of expeditions to North America. He led two expeditions in search of El Dorado or “City of Gold” in South America. The men under his command ransacked a Spanish outpost. Upon his return to England, to appease the Spanish, Raleigh was arrested and executed.
October 29, 1929 – The Wall Street crash occurred, starting the Great Depression.
- On September 7, 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at $377.56.
- On October 24, “Black Thursday”, the market lost 11 percent of its value at the opening bell on very heavy trading. A record 12,894,650 shares were traded.
- On October 28, “Black Monday,” more investors facing margin calls decided to get out of the market, and the slide continued with a record loss in the Dow for the day of 38.33 points, or 12.82%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at $260.64.
- The next day, October 29, the panic selling reached its peak with some stocks having no buyers at any price. The Dow lost an additional 30.57 points, or 11.73%, for a total drop of 23% in two days. 16,410,030 shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at $230.07.
- After a one-day recovery on October 30, when the Dow regained 28.40 points, or 12.34%, to close at 258.47, the market continued to fall, arriving at an interim bottom on November 13, 1929, with the Dow closing at 198.60.
- The market then recovered for several months, starting on November 14, with the Dow gaining 18.59 points to close at 217.28, and reaching a secondary closing peak (bear market rally) of 294.07 on April 17, 1930.
- The Dow then embarked on another, much longer, steady slide from April 1930 to July 8, 1932, when it closed at 41.22, its lowest level of the 20th century, concluding an 89.2% loss for the index in less than three years.
- Beginning on March 15, 1933, and continuing through the rest of the 1930s, the Dow began to slowly regain the ground it had lost. The largest percentage increases of the Dow Jones occurred during the early and mid-1930s. In late 1937, there was a sharp dip in the stock market, but prices held well above the 1932 lows. The Dow Jones did not return to the peak closing of September 3, 1929, until November 23, 1954.
From Today in Science
In 1945, the first ball point pen in the U.S. went on sale at Gimbels Department Stores for $12.95. In June, 1945, Chicago businessman Milton Reynolds, in Buenos Aires on unrelated business, saw the Biro pen in a store, recognized the pen’s sales potential and bought a few as samples. Reynolds returned to America and started manufacturing. He copied the product in four months, (ignoring the patent rights of the Argentine manufacturer, Eversharp Company. On the first day of sale, his Reynolds’ Rocket pen was immediately successful; $100,000 worth are sold its first day on the market). The ballpoint pen became a fad. However, it leaked, skipped and was unreliable. By 1948, the price dropped to less than 50 cents. Reynolds’ company failed in 1951.