April 30th in History

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April 30 is the 120th day of the year (121st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 245 days remaining until the end of the year.

Holidays

History

In 311,  The Diocletianic Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire ends.

In 313,  Battle of Tzirallum: Emperor Licinius defeats Maximinus II and unifies the Eastern Roman Empire.

In 642,  Chindasuinth is proclaimed king by the Visigothic nobility and bishops.

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In 783,  Hildegard, Frankish queen (b. 758) dies. She was daughter of the Germanic Count Gerold of Vinzgau and Emma of Alemannia (daughter of Duke Hnabi and Hereswintha vom Bodensee (of Lake Constance)). She was the second wife of Charlemagne, who married her around 771. They had the following children:

  • Charles, (772 or 773–811), Count of Maine from 781, joint King of the Franks with Charlemagne from 800
  • Adelaide (773 or 774)
  • Pippin (773 or 777–810), born Carloman and later renamed at baptism, king of Italy from 781
  • Rotrude (or Hruodrud) (777–810)
  • Louis the Pious, (778–840) king of Aquitaine from 781, emperor from 813 (sole Emperor from 814) until 840
  • Lothair, twin brother of Louis, (778–780) died young in 780
  • Bertha (779–823?)
  • Gisela (781–808?)
  • Hildegarde (782–783?)

In 1315,  Enguerrand de Marigny is hanged on the public gallows at Montfaucon.

In 1492,  Spain gives Christopher Columbus his commission of exploration.

Coat of arms of Sir Edmund de la Pole, 3rd Duke of Suffolk, KG.png

In 1513,  Edmund de la Pole, Yorkist pretender to the English throne, is executed on the orders of Henry VIII.  De la Pole’s eldest brother John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln (c. 1464-1487), was the designated heir of his maternal uncle, Richard III of England, who gave him a pension and the reversion of the estates of Lady Margaret Beaufort. However, on the accession of Henry VII following the Battle of Bosworth Field, Lincoln took the oath of allegiance instead of claiming the throne for himself. In 1487, Lincoln joined the rebellion of Lambert Simnel and was killed at the Battle of Stoke.  After the death of his older brother, Edmund became the leading Yorkist claimant to the throne. Nevertheless, he succeeded to the title Duke of Suffolk in 1491, though in 1493 Edmund’s title was demoted to the rank of Earl. He married Margaret, daughter of Richard Scrope. In 1501 the headstrong Edmund fled the Kingdom of England with the help of James Tyrrell, who was subsequently executed for these actions. Edmund sought the help of Emperor Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor. In 1502 Maximilian agreed to a treaty not to back de la Pole should he make an attempt on the throne of England. In 1506, Maximilian’s son, Philip of Burgundy, was blown off course while sailing, and reluctantly and unexpectedly became a guest of Henry VII. Needing to set sail again in order to claim his wife’s inheritance (Castile), Philip was persuaded by Henry to hand over the Earl of Suffolk. Henry agreed to the proviso that Edmund would not be harmed and restricted himself to imprisoning the earl. The next king, Henry VIII, did not feel bound to this agreement and had Suffolk executed in 1513.

In 1557,  Mapuche leader Lautaro is killed by Spanish forces at the Battle of Mataquito in Chile.

In 1598,  Juan de Oñate makes a formal declaration of his Conquest of New Mexico.

In 1636,  Eighty Years’ War: Dutch Republic forces recapture a strategically important fort from Spain after a nine-month siege.

In 1671,  Petar Zrinski, the Croatian Ban from the Zrinski family, is executed.

In 1789,  On the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington takes the oath of office to become the first elected President of the United States.

In 1803,  Louisiana Purchase: The United States purchases the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, more than doubling the size of the young nation.

In 1812,  The Territory of Orleans becomes the 18th U.S. state under the name Louisiana.

In 1838,  Nicaragua declares independence from the Central American Federation.

In 1863,  A 65-man French Foreign Legion infantry patrol fights a force of nearly 2,000 Mexican soldiers to nearly the last man in Hacienda Camarón, Mexico.

In 1864, New York became the first state to charge a hunting license fee.

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In 1865,  Robert FitzRoy, English admiral, meteorologist, and politician, 2nd Governor of New Zealand (b. 1805) committed suicide by cutting his throat with a razor. FitzRoy died having exhausted his entire fortune (£6,000, the equivalent of £400,000 today) on public expenditures. He was an English officer of the Royal Navy and a scientist. He achieved lasting fame as the captain of HMS Beagle during Charles Darwin‘s famous voyage, FitzRoy’s second expedition to Tierra del Fuego and the Southern Cone.

FitzRoy was a pioneering meteorologist who made accurate daily weather predictions, which he called by a new name of his own invention: “forecasts”. In 1854 he established what would later be called the Met Office, and created systems to get weather information to sailors and fishermen for their safety. He was an able surveyor and hydrographer. As Governor of New Zealand, serving from 1843 to 1845, he tried to protect the Maori from illegal land sales claimed by British settlers.

In 1871,  The Camp Grant massacre takes place in Arizona Territory.

In 1885,  Governor of New York David B. Hill signs legislation creating the Niagara Reservation, New York’s first state park, ensuring that Niagara Falls will not be devoted solely to industrial and commercial use.

In 1889, the first national holiday in the United States was celebrated. The citizens of the U.S. observed the centennial of George Washington’s inauguration.

In 1894,  Coxey’s Army reaches Washington, D.C. to protest the unemployment caused by the Panic of 1893.

In 1900,  Hawaii becomes a territory of the United States, with Sanford B. Dole as governor.

In 1900,  Casey Jones dies in a train wreck in Vaughan, Mississippi, while trying to make up time on the Cannonball Express. He from Jackson, Tennessee, was an American railroader who worked for the Illinois Central Railroad (IC). As a boy, he lived near Cayce, Kentucky, where he acquired the nickname of “Cayce,” which he chose to spell as “Casey.” On April 30, 1900, he was killed when his passenger train, the Cannonball Express, collided with a stalled freight train at Vaughan, Mississippi, on a foggy and rainy night. His dramatic death while trying to stop his train and save lives made him a hero; he was immortalized in a popular ballad sung by his friend Wallace Saunders, an African-American engine wiper for the IC.

In 1904,  The Louisiana Purchase Exposition World’s Fair opens in St. Louis, Missouri.

In 1907,  Honolulu, Hawaii becomes an independent city.

In 1920,  Peru becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.

In 1925,  Automaker Dodge Brothers, Inc is sold to Dillon, Read & Co. for US$146 million plus $50 million for charity.

In 1927,  The Federal Industrial Institute for Women opens in Alderson, West Virginia, as the first women’s federal prison in the United States.

In 1927,  Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford become the first celebrities to leave their footprints in concrete at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

In 1937,  The Philippines holds a plebiscite for Filipino women on whether they should be extended the right to suffrage; over 90% would vote in the affirmative.

In 1938,  The animated cartoon short Porky’s Hare Hunt debuts in movie theaters, introducing Happy Rabbit (a prototype of Bugs Bunny).

In 1938,  The first televised FA Cup Final takes place between Huddersfield Town and Preston North End.

In 1939,  The 1939-40 New York World’s Fair opens.

In 1939,  NBC inaugurates its regularly scheduled television service in New York City, broadcasting President Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s N.Y. World’s Fair opening day ceremonial address.

In 1939, The first railroad car equipped with fluorescent lights was put into service. The train car was known as the “General Pershing Zephyr.””

In 1943,  World War II: Operation Mincemeat: The submarine HMS Seraph surfaces in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain to deposit a dead man planted with false invasion plans and dressed as a British military intelligence officer.

In 1945,  World War II: Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide after being married for one day. Soviet soldiers raise the Victory Banner over the Reichstag building.

In 1947,  In Nevada, the Boulder Dam is renamed the Hoover Dam a second time.

In 1948,  In Bogotá, Colombia, the Organization of American States is established.

In 1952,  Mr. Potato Head was the first toy to be advertised on television. Followed were Katie The Carrot, Oscar The Orange, Kooky The Cucumber, and Pete The Pepper.

In 1953,  In Warner Robins, Georgia, an F4 tornado kills 18 people.

A man with receding white hair wearing a gray jacket and vest, black tie, and white shirt, seated and leaning on a desk

In 1956,  Former Vice President and Senator Alben Barkley dies during a speech in Virginia. He collapses after proclaiming “I would rather be a servant in the house of the lord than sit in the seats of the mighty.” He was a lawyer and politician from Kentucky who served in both houses of Congress and as the 35th Vice President of the United States from 1949 to 1953. In 1905, he was elected county attorney for McCracken County, Kentucky. He was chosen County Judge/Executive in 1909 and U.S. Representative from Kentucky’s First District in 1912. As a Representative, he was a liberal Democrat, supporting President Woodrow Wilson‘s New Freedom domestic agenda and foreign policy.

Endorsing Prohibition and denouncing parimutuel betting, Barkley narrowly lost the 1923 Democratic gubernatorial primary to fellow Representative J. Campbell Cantrill. In 1926, he unseated Republican Senator Richard P. Ernst. In the Senate, he supported the New Deal approach to addressing the Great Depression and was elected to succeed Senate Majority Leader Joseph T. Robinson upon Robinson’s death in 1937.

During his 1938 re-election bid, his opponent A. B. “Happy” Chandler accused him of using Works Progress Administration employees to campaign for him; Barkley claimed Chandler used state employees in the same way. Neither candidate was charged with any wrongdoing, but in 1939, Congress passed the Hatch Act, making it illegal for federal employees to campaign for political candidates.

In 1961,  K-19, the first Soviet nuclear submarine equipped with nuclear missiles, is commissioned.

In 1963,  The Bristol Bus Boycott is held in Bristol to protest the Bristol Omnibus Company‘s refusal to employ Black or Asian bus crews, drawing national attention to racial discrimination in the United Kingdom.

In 1966,  The Church of Satan is established at the Black House in San Francisco.

In 1967,  The Aldene Connection opened in Roselle Park, NJ, shutting down the CNJ’s Jersey City waterfront terminal and transferring commuters to Newark Penn Station.

In 1973,  Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces that top White House aides H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and others have resigned.

In 1975,  Fall of Saigon: Communist forces gain control of Saigon. The Vietnam War formally ends with the unconditional surrender of South Vietnamese president Dương Văn Minh.

In 1980,  Beatrix becomes Queen of the Netherlands.

In 1980,  The Iranian Embassy siege begins in London.

In 1982,  The Bijon Setu massacre occurs in Calcutta.

In 1987, Education Secretary William J. Bennett called for mandatory AIDS testing for several groups of people, including hospital patients and prison inmates.

In 1988, “Molloko,” the first California condor chick to be conceived in captivity, was hatched at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

In 1993,  CERN announces World Wide Web protocols will be free.

In 1993,  Monica Seles is stabbed by Günter Parche, an obsessed fan, during a quarterfinal match of the 1993 Citizen Cup in Hamburg, Germany

In 1994,  Formula One racing driver Roland Ratzenberger is killed in a crash during the qualifying session of the San Marino Grand Prix run at Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari outside Imola, Italy.

In 1995,  U.S. President Bill Clinton becomes the first President to visit Northern Ireland.

In 2004,  U.S. media release graphic photos of American soldiers abusing and sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

In 2008,  Two skeletal remains found near Yekaterinburg, Russia, are confirmed by Russian scientists to be the remains of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia and Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, one of his sisters.

In 2008, The photo ID previous to voting has been upheld by the US supreme court. This has always seemed like a no brainer to me. It takes a photo ID to get a library card, to get on an airplane or to drive a car but none to vote. In Tennessee, in an attempt to pass voter ID, Rep. Deborah Maggart offered free photo ID for those who could not afford one. Her bill even allowed people to vote on a provisional ballot if they did not have an ID (But they were required to provide proof before their vote was counted). She even provided proof that requiring a photo ID to vote does not disenfranchise legal voters. It was still killed in the house.  The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to let Indiana demand photo identification from voters paves the way for other states to do the same, experts say. While the court’s 6-3 decision leaves the door open for future legal challenges if proof is presented that voters couldn’t cast their ballots because of the new rules, the court didn’t specify how many people must be affected for it to consider striking down the law.

In 2009,  Chrysler files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

In 2009,  Seven people are killed and another ten injured at a Queen’s Day parade in Apeldoorn, Netherlands in an attempted assassination on Queen Beatrix.

In 2009,  Azerbaijan State Oil Academy shooting: Twelve people were killed (students and staff members) by an armed attacker.

In 2012,  An overloaded ferry capsizes on the Brahmaputra River in India killing at least 103 people.

In 2013,  Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands abdicates and Willem-Alexander becomes King of the Netherlands.

In 2014,  A bomb blast in Ürümqi kills three people and injures 79 others.

In 2016, In a “Farce,” Missouri Replaces Common Core with Common Core. In a half-baked effort to placate an outraged citizenry, Missouri officials claimed to be “replacing” Common Core with supposedly “new” standards allegedly developed with local input. In the real world, however, the dumbed-down, Obama-backed national “education” standards were preserved largely intact, just under a new name, following a process that participants denounced as a “farce.” The federally decreed testing regime and data-gathering schemes will continue, too. Critics and those involved in the process were outraged by the “un-American” scheming. They vowed to keep fighting, saying it was time to “clip the wings” of the state education bureaucracy.

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