On January 30th...

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1592 Ippolito Aldobrandini was elected Pope Clement VIII.

1648 Spain and the Netherlands signed the Peace of Munster, ending the Thirty Years' War.

1649 Charles I, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, was executed.

1661 Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, was ritually executed after having been dead for two years.

1771 Explorer George Bass was born.

1806 Prussia took possession of Hanover.

1815 Congress authorized the purchase of Thomas Jefferson's library as the nucleus of the Library of Congress.

1826 The Menai Suspension Bridge, connecting the Isle of Anglesey to the northwest coast of Wales, was opened.

1835 Richard Lawrence misfired at President Andrew Jackson in Washington, D. C., in the first attempted assassination of a U. S. President.

1836 Betsy Ross, legendary maker of the first "Stars and Stripes," died.

1841 A fire destroyed two-thirds of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.

1847 Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco (California).

1854 The first election in Washington Territory was held.

1862 The USS Monitor was launched.

1873 Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days was published in France.

1879 French President Patrice de Mac-Mahon resigned.

1882 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States, was born.

1888 Botanist Asa Gray died.

1889 Archduke Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown, was found dead with his mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera in Mayerling.

1891 Aviation pioneer Walter Herschel Beech was born.

1894 The pneumatic hammer was patented by Charles King.

1895 The SS Elbe sank after a collision in the North Sea, killing 332 persons.

1905 Physicist Emilio Segrè was born.

1911 The Canadian Naval Service became the Royal Canadian Navy.

1914 Country musician Louis Marshall "Grandpa" Jones was born.

1922 Comedian Dick Martin was born.

1927 Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was born.

1928 Theater producer Harold Prince was born.

1930 Actor Gene Hackman was born.

1933 Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany.
1933 "Lone Ranger" premiered on ABC radio.

1937 Actress Vanessa Redgrave was born.
1937 Chess player Boris Spassky was born.

1941 American politician Dick Cheney was born.

1944 U. S. troops landed on Majuro, Marshall Islands.

1945 U. S. Rangers and Filipino resistance fighters liberated over 500 Allied POW's from a Japanese prison camp at Cabanatuan.

1946 The "Franklin Roosevelt dime" was introduced into general use.

1948 Mohandas Gandhi, leader of the Indian independence movement, was assassinated.
1948 The 5th Winter Olympic Games opened in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
1948 Orville Wright, co-inventor of the airplane, died.

1951 Singer Phil Collins was born.
1951 Automobile designer/builder Ferdinand Porsche died.

1954 The government of Italian Premier Amintore Fanfani resigned.

1955 Golfer Curtis Strange was born.

1957 Golfer Payne Stewart was born.

1958 The United Kingdom's House of Lords passed a bill allowing women to take seats.
1958 Commuter trains crashed in a London, England, surburb, killing 10 persons.

1959 Nine elderly residents perished in a nursing home fire at Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

1960 Argentine warships and aircraft began searching for an unidentified submarine in the Golfo Nuevo, 630 miles south of Buenos Aires.

1962 A bomb thrown from a speeding car caused heavy damage to the Czechoslovak Embassy in Quito, Ecuador.
1962 Two members of the "Flying Wallendas" were killed when their 7-person pyramid collapsed during a performance in Detroit, Michigan.
1962 King Abdullah II of Jordan was born.

1964 Ranger VI was launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida.
1964 Elektrons I and II were launched by Russia.
1964 A coup in South Vietnam toppled the military junta that had deposed Ngo Din Diem in late 1963.

1968 Vietcong raiders and North Vietnamese troops launched attacks on major cities throughout South Vietnam.
1968 Bobby Goldsboro recorded "Honey."

1969 Ther Beatles performed a 42-minute concert on the roof of Apple Records in London, England.
1969 Father Dominique Pire, recipient of the 1958 Nobel Prize for Peace, died.

1972 Twenty-seven unarmed civilians were shot (of whom 14 were killed) by the British Army during a civil rights march in Derry, Ireland ("Bloody Sunday").

1974 Actor Christian Bale was born.

1977 The final episode of the mini-series "Roots" aired.

1979 Rhodesia agreed to a new constitution.

1983 The Washington Redskins defeated the Miami Dolphins 27-17 in Super Bowl XVII.

1991 Actor John McIntire died.

1994 The Dallas Cowboys defeated the Buffalo Bills 30-13 in Super Bowl XXVIII.

1995 A car bomb killed 42 persons and injured 296 in Algiers, Algeria.

2000 Kenya Airways Flight 432 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Ivory Coast, killing 169 persons.
2000 The St. Louis Rams defeated the Tennessee Titans 23-16 in Super Bowl XXXIV.

2003 Belgium legally recognized same-sex marriages.

2006 Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, died.

2007 Author Sidney Sheldon died.

2009 Ingemar Johansson, former World Heavyweight Boxing Champion, died.

2013 Singer Patty Andrews died.

2014 Twenty-four hostages were killed after six suicide bombers took over the Iraqi Ministry of Transportation in Baghdad.

2016 Boko Haram militants on motorcycles attacked a Dalori willage near Maiduguri, Nigeria, killing at least 65 people and injuring 136.

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This page was last updated on January 30, 2019.