On June 30th...

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1397 Denmark, Norway, and Sweden signed the Union of Kalmar under Queen Margaretha

1470 King Charles VIII of France was born.

1564 French Huguenots established Fort Caroline at what is now Jacksonville, Florida.

1660 Mathematician William Oughtred died.

1748 Astronomer Jacques Dominique Cassini was born.

1785 James Edward Oglethorpe, founder of Georgia, died.

1834 The U.S. Congress created Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).

1854 The U.S. Senate ratified the Gadsden Treaty, confirming the purchase of land from Mexico in what are now Arizona and New Mexico (the Gadsden Purchase).

1865 Eight people accused of conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln were found guilty.

1879 Actor Walter Hampden was born.

1882 Charles Guitteau, assassin of President James A. Garfield, was executed.

1886 Arturo Toscanini conducted his first orchestra.

1894 London, England's, Tower Bridge opened.

1898 The Winton Motor Carriage Company published the first known automobile ad, in Scientific American, using the headline “dispense with a horse.”

1906 The Pure Food and Drug Act of the United States became law.
1906 John Hope became the first black president of Morehouse College.

1908 A giant fireball most likely caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet impacted Tunguska, Siberia.

1909 Juan Bosch, President of the Dominican Republic, was born.

1914 Mohandas Gandhi was arrested for the first time, while campaigning for civil rights in South Africa.

1917 Singer Lena Horne was born.

1918 Actress Susan Hayward was born.

1919 Nobel Prize-winning physicist Baron Rayleigh died.

1925 Charles Jenkins was granted a U.S. patent for "Transmitting Pictures over Wireless" (early television).

1934 Adolf Hitler staged a purge of the Nazi Party (Night of the Long Knives).
1934 Magician Harry Blackstone Jr. was born.

1936 Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind was published.

1938 Superman first appeared in DC Comics' Action Comics Series issue #1.

1940 The comic strip "Brenda Starr" first appeared.
1940 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was created.

1943 The Works Progress Administration went out of existence.
1943 Singer Florence Ballard was born.

1948 The last British troops left Israel.

1952 The soap opera "Guiding Light" made the move from radio to television.

1953 The first Chevrolet Corvette rolled off the assembly line.

1955 Comedian David Alan Grier was born.

1957 Auto racer Sterling Marlin was born.

1958 The U.S. Congress approved the admittance of Alaska to the Union.

1959 Actor Vincent D'Onofrio was born.

1960 The Belgian Congo gained independence from Belgium, as the Democratic Republic of Congo.

1873 Inventor Lee De Forest died.

1962 Both Burundi and Rwanda became independent.

1966 Boxer Mike Tyson was born.

1969 Spain ceded Ifni to Morocco.

1970 Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium opened.

1974 Soviet ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov defected.

1982 The Equal Rights Amendment was officially declared unratified, having fallen short by three states.

1985 Olympic gold medal swimmer Michael Phelps was born.

1993 Actor Spanky McFarland died.

1994 The U.S. Ice Skating Federation barred Tonya Harding for life.

1995 Actor Gale Gordon died.

2001 Guitarist Chet Atkins died.

2003 Comedian Buddy Hackett died.

2012 Yitzhak Shamir, two-time Prime Minister of Israel, died.

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This page was last updated on April 25, 2018.