October 30

October 30 is the 303rd day of the year (304th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 62 days remaining.

Events

1400-1899

1470 - Henry VI of England returns to the throne after Earl of Warwick defeats Yorkists in battle.

1831 - In Southampton County, Virginia, escaped slave Nat Turner is captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave revolt in United States history.

1864 - Second war of Schleswig ends: Duke Frederick and the Danish Crown recognize Prussia's and Austria's annexation of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg.

1864 - Helena, Montana is founded after four prospectors discover gold at "Last Chance Gulch."

1894 - Domenico Menegatti obtains a patent for a procedure to be applied in producing pandoro industrially.

1900-1999

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

1925 - John Logie Baird creates Britain's first television transmitter.

1938 - Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, causing a nationwide panic.

1941 - World War II: Franklin Delano Roosevelt approves US$1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union.

1944 - Anne Frank is deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

1953 - Cold War: US 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.

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 nuclear device ever detonated. Nikita Kruschev announces that the scientists had planned to make it 100 megatons, but had reduced the yield so as to avoid breaking all the windows in Moscow.

1961 - Due to "violations of Lenin's precepts", it is decreed that Josef 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 drinks to the Marines the day before.

1966 - The Zodiac killer kills his first victim, 18-year old Cheri Jo Bates, in Riverside, California.

1968 - The film The Lion in Winter, starring Katharine Hepburn, debuts.

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 - US President Richard Nixon approves legislation to increase Social Security spending by US$5.3 billion.

1974 - "The Rumble in the Jungle": Muhammad Ali knocks out George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire to regain the World Heavyweight Boxing championship.

1975 - Prince Juan Carlos becomes King of Spain after dictator Francisco Franco concedes that he is too ill to govern.

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.

1987 - In Japan, NEC releases the first 16-bit home entertainment system, the PC-Engine.

1988 - Philip Morris buys Kraft Foods for US$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%).

1997 - British au pair Louise Woodward is found guilty of the baby-shaking death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen.