The week of Oct. 28-Nov. 3

Oct. 28:

1886, the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France, was dedicated in New York Harbor by President Grover Cleveland.

1962, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev informed the United States that he had ordered the dismantling of missile bases in Cuba; in return, the U.S. secretly agreed to remove nuclear missiles from U.S. installations in Turkey.

1991, what became known as "The Perfect Storm" began forming hundreds of miles east of Nova Scotia; lost at sea during the storm were the six crew members of the Andrea Gail, a swordfishing boat from Gloucester, Massachusetts.

2002, American diplomat Laurence Foley was assassinated in front of his house in Amman, Jordan, in the first such attack on a U.S. diplomat in decades.

Oct. 29:

1901, President William McKinley's assassin, Leon Czolgosz, was electrocuted.

1929, "Black Tuesday" descended upon the New York Stock Exchange. Prices collapsed amid panic selling and thousands of investors were wiped out as America's "Great Depression" began.

1964, thieves made off with the Star of India and other gems from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. (The Star and most of the other gems were recovered; three men were convicted of stealing them.)

1998, Sen. John Glenn, at age 77, roared back into space aboard the shuttle Discovery, retracing the trail he'd blazed for America's astronauts 36 years earlier.

Oct. 30:

1912, Vice President James S. Sherman, running for a second term of office with President William Howard Taft, died six days before Election Day. (Sherman was replaced with Nicholas Murray Butler, but Taft, the Republican candidate, ended up losing in an Electoral College landslide to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.)

1974, Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15--round bout in Kinshasa, Zaire, known as the "Rumble in the Jungle," to regain his world heavyweight title.

1985, schoolteacher--astronaut Christa McAuliffe witnessed the launch of the space shuttle Challenger, the same craft that would carry her and six other crew members to their deaths in Jan. 1986.

Oct. 31:

1517, Martin Luther sent his 95 Theses denouncing what he saw as the abuses of the Catholic Church, especially the sale of indulgences, to the Archbishop of Mainz, Germany (by some accounts, Luther also posted the Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg), marking the start of the Protestant Reformation.

1926, magician Harry Houdini died in Detroit of peritonitis resulting from a ruptured appendix.

1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a halt to all U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, saying he hoped for fruitful peace negotiations.

1998, a genetic study was released suggesting President Thomas Jefferson did in fact father at least one child by his slave Sally Hemings.

Nov. 1:

1765, the Stamp Act, passed by the British Parliament, went into effect, prompting stiff resistance from American colonists.

1950, two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to force their way into Blair House in Washington, D.C., in a failed attempt to assassinate President Harry S. Truman. (One of the pair was killed, along with a White House police officer.)

1989, East Germany reopened its border with Czechoslovakia, prompting tens of thousands of refugees to flee to the West.

Nov 2:

1947, Howard Hughes piloted his huge wooden flying boat, the Hughes H--4 Hercules (derisively dubbed the "Spruce Goose" by detractors), on its only flight, which lasted about a minute over Long Beach Harbor in California.

1948, President Harry S. Truman surprised the experts by winning a narrow upset over Republican challenger Thomas E. Dewey.

2000, American astronaut Bill Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, became the first residents of the international space station.

Nov. 3:

1839, the first Opium War between China and Britain broke out.

1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 2, the second manmade satellite, into orbit; on board was a dog named Laika, who was sacrificed in the experiment.

1986, the Iran--Contra affair came to light as Ash--Shiraa, a pro--Syrian Lebanese magazine, first broke the story of U.S. arms sales to Iran.

-- Associated Press