Historical Events on 30 Oct

Historical Events on 30 Oct

1137 - Battle of Rignano between Ranulf of Apulia and Roger II of Sicily.
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 - Battle of Rio Salado.
1470 - Henry VI of England returns to the English throne after Earl of Warwick defeats Yorkists in battle.
1485 - Henry VII of England crowned.
1502 - Vasco da Gama returns to Calicut for the second time.
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 - Tsar 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 a nationwide panic in the United States.
1941 - 1,500 Jews from Pidhaytsi (in western Ukraine) are sent by Nazis to Belzec extermination camp.
1941 - World War II: Franklin Delano Roosevelt approves U.S. $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations.
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 thr
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 58 megatons of yield, it is still the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or not. Nikita Kruschev announces that the scientists had planned to mak
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 was found on the body of a 13-year-old Vietnamese boy who sold
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 Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus for the first 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 home entertainment system, the TurboGrafx-16, known as PC Engine.
1988 - Philip Morris buys Kraft Foods for U.S. $13.1 billion.
1991 - The Madrid Conference for Middle East peace talks opens.
1995 - Quebec sovereignists narrowly lose a referendum for a mandate to negotiate independence from Canada (vote was 50.6% to 49.4%).
2002 - British Digital terrestrial television (DTT) Service Freeview begins transmitting in parts of the United Kingdom.
2005 - The rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II) is reconsecrated after a thirteen-year rebuilding project.
637 - Antioch surrenders to the Muslim forces under Rashidun Caliphate after the Battle of Iron bridge.