October 30 - Events

Events

• 758 – Guangzhou is sacked by Arab and Persian pirates.
• 1137 – Battle of Rignano between Ranulf of Apulia and Roger II of Sicily.
• 1226 – Tran Thu Do, head of the Tran clan of Vietnam, forces Ly Hue Tong, the last emperor of the Ly dynasty, to commit suicide.
• 1270 – The Eighth Crusade and siege of Tunis end by an agreement between Charles I of Sicily (brother to King Louis IX of France, who had died months earlier) and the sultan of Tunis.
• 1340 – Portuguese and Castilian forces halt a Marinid invasion at the Battle of Río Salado.
• 1485 – King Henry VII of England is crowned.
• 1501 – Ballet of Chestnuts – a banquet held by Cesare Borgia in the Papal Palace where fifty prostitutes or courtesans are in attendance for the entertainment of the guests.
• 1806 – Believing he is facing a much larger force, Prussian Lieutenant General Friedrich von Romberg, commanding 5,300 men, surrendered the city of Stettin to 800 French soldiers commanded by General Lassalle.
• 1831 – In Southampton County, Virginia, escaped slave Nat Turner is captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in United States history.
• 1863 – Danish Prince Wilhelm arrives in Athens to assume his throne as George I, King of the Hellenes.
• 1864 – Second war of Schleswig ends. Denmark renounces all claim to Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg, which come under Prussian and Austrian administration.
• 1864 – Helena, Montana is founded after four prospectors discover gold at "Last Chance Gulch".
• 1894 – Domenico Melegatti obtains a patent for a procedure to be applied in producing pandoro industrially.
• 1905 – Czar Nicholas II of Russia grants Russia's first constitution, creating a legislative assembly.
• 1918 – The Ottoman Empire signs an armistice with the Allies, ending the First World War in the Middle East.
• 1920 – The Communist Party of Australia is founded in Sydney.
• 1922 – Benito Mussolini is made Prime Minister of Italy.
• 1925 – John Logie Baird creates Britain's first television transmitter.
• 1929 – The Stuttgart Cable Car is constructed in Stuttgart, Germany.
• 1938 – Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, causing anxiety in some of the audience in the United States.
• 1941 – World War II: Franklin Delano Roosevelt approves U.S. $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations.
• 1941 – 1,500 Jews from Pidhaytsi (in western Ukraine) are sent by Nazis to Belzec extermination camp.
• 1942 – Lt. Tony Fasson, Able Seaman Colin Grazier and canteen assistant Tommy Brown from HMS Petard board U-559, retrieving material which would lead to the decryption of the German Enigma code.
• 1944 – Anne Frank and sister Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
• 1945 – Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signs a contract for the Brooklyn Dodgers to break the baseball color barrier.
• 1947 – The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which is the foundation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is founded.
• 1950 – Pope Pius XII witnesses "The Miracle of the Sun" while at the Vatican.
• 1953 – Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves the top secret document National Security Council Paper No. 162/2, which states that the United States' arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat.
• 1960 – Michael Woodruff performs the first successful kidney transplant in the United Kingdom at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
• 1961 – Nuclear testing: The Soviet Union detonates the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya; at 50 megatons of yield, it is still the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or otherwise.
• 1961 – Because of "violations of Lenin's precepts", it is decreed that Joseph Stalin's body be removed from its place of honour inside Lenin's tomb and buried near the Kremlin wall with a plain granite marker instead.
• 1965 – Vietnam War: Just miles from Da Nang, United States Marines repel an intense attack by wave after wave of Viet Cong forces, killing 56 guerrillas. Among the dead, a sketch of Marine positions is found on the body of a 13-year-old Vietnamese boy who sold drinks to the Marines the day before.
• 1970 – In Vietnam, the worst monsoon to hit the area in six years causes large floods, kills 293, leaves 200,000 homeless and virtually halts the Vietnam War.
• 1972 – A collision between two commuter trains in Chicago, Illinois kills 45 and injures 332.
• 1973 – The Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosphorus for the second time.
• 1974 – The Rumble in the Jungle boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman takes place in Kinshasa, Zaire.
• 1975 – Prince Juan Carlos becomes Spain's acting head of state, taking over for the country's ailing dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco.
• 1980 – El Salvador and Honduras sign a peace treaty to put the border dispute fought over in 1969's Football War before the International Court of Justice.
• 1983 – The first democratic elections in Argentina after seven years of military rule are held.
• 1985 – Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for mission STS-61-A, its final successful mission.
• 1987 – In Japan, NEC releases the first 16-bit (fourth generation) video game console, the PC Engine, which is later sold in other markets under the name TurboGrafx-16.
• 1991 – The Madrid Conference for Middle East peace talks opens.
• 1993 – The Troubles: The Ulster Defence Association, an Ulster loyalist paramilitary, carry out a mass shooting at a Halloween party in Greysteel, Northern Ireland. Eight civilians are murdered and thirteen wounded.
• 2000 – The last Multics machine is shut down.
• 2005 – The rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II) is reconsecrated after a thirteen-year rebuilding project.