Today in History: July 30

101 BC       Battle of Vercellae: Roman army under Gaius Marius defeats the Cimbri in Cisalpine Gaul, ending the Celto-Germanic threat on Italy’s border with over 100,000 Cimbri killed

579   Benedict I ends his reign as Catholic Pope

657   St Vitalian begins his reign as Catholic Pope succeeding Eugene I

762   Baghdad is founded

1178 Frederick I (Barbarossa), Holy Roman Emperor, crowned King of Burgundy

1419 First defenestration of Prague: anti-Catholic Hussites, followers of executed reformer Jan Hus, storm Prague town hall and throw the judge, mayor and several city council members out the windows. They die in the fall or killed by crowd outside

1502 Christopher Columbus lands at Guanaja in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras during his fourth voyage

1537 Resistant of Bomy: French/Dutch ceasefire

1601 Spanish garrison of Rhine birch surrenders to Earl Mauritius

1619 The first representative assembly in the Americas, the House of Burgesses, convenes for the first time in Jamestown, Virginia

1626 An earthquake in Naples, Italy, kills about 10,000 people

1650 Prince Willem II occupies Amsterdam

1655 Dutch troops occupy Fort Assahudi Seram

1656 Swedish forces under the command of King Charles X Gustav defeat the forces of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at the Battle of Warsaw

1676 Nathaniel Bacon issues the “Declaration of the People of Virginia”, beginning Bacon’s Rebellion against the rule of Governor William Berkeley

1715 Spanish gold and silver fleet disappears off St Lucie, Florida

1729 City of Baltimore, Maryland founded

1733 Society of Freemasons opens first American lodge in Boston

1739 Caspar Wistar begins glass manufacturing in Allowaystown, New Jersey

1756 Bartolomeo Rastrelli presents the newly-built Catherine Palace to Empress Elizabeth and her courtiers in Russia

1775 Captain James Cook with Resolution returns to England

1792 500 Marseillaisian men sing France’s national anthem for the first time time

1811 Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, leader of the Mexican insurgency, is executed by the Spanish in Chihuahua, Mexico

1822 James Varick becomes first bishop of African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

1825 Malden Island is discovered in the central Pacific by British warship HMS Blonde

1836 First English language newspaper published in Hawaii

1859 First ascent of Grand Combin, one of the highest summits in the Alps

1863 President Abraham Lincoln issues “eye-for-eye” order to shoot a rebel prisoner for every black prisoner shot

1863 American Indian Wars: Representatives of the United States and tribal leaders Chief Pocatello of the Shoshone tribe signs the Treaty of Box Elder, promising to stop harassing the emigrant trails in southern Idaho and northern Utah

1864 American Civil War: Battle of the Crater: Union forces attempt to break Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia by exploding a large bomb under their trenches

1865 The steamboat Brother Jonathan sinks off the coast of Crescent City, California, killing 225 passengers, the deadliest shipwreck on the Pacific Coast of the U.S. at the time

1866 New Orleans’s Democratic government orders police to raid an integrated Republican Party meeting, killing 40 people and injuring 150

1866 Armed Confederate veterans in New Orleans riot against a meeting of Radical Republicans, killing 48 people and injuring another 100

1869 The Charles, considered the world’s first “oil tanker”, departs from the United States headed for Europe with a bulk capacity of 7,000 barrels of oil

1870 Staten Island ferry “Westfield” burns, killing 100

1870 The Republic of Klipdrift is proclaimed by Transvaal President Andries Pretorius after the discovery of diamonds in South Africa in 1866 resulted in a flood of treasure hunters; ownership of the diamond fields was contested by the Boer republics

1871 The Staten Island Ferry Westfield’s boiler explodes, killing over 85 people.

1872 Mahlon Loomis patents wireless telegraphy

1907 Russia and Japan sign an agreement guaranteeing freedom of China while recognizing each other’s special interests

1908 Around the World Automobile Race ends in Paris

1909 Wright Brothers deliver the first military plane to the army

1909 French chemist Eugène Schueller founds L’Oréal with his new range of hair dyes

1912 Japan’s Emperor Meiji dies and is succeeded by his son Yoshihito, who is now known as the Emperor Taishō.

1913 Conclusion of 2nd Balkan War

1921 The Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) forms; the party changed its name to the South African Communist Party (SACP) in 1953, after it had been forced underground

1923 New Zealand claims Ross Dependency in Antarctica

1930 First FIFA World Cup Final in Montevideo, Uruguay: Uruguay beats Argentina, 4-2 in the inaugural event to win the first FIFA World Cup

1935 First Penguin book is published, starting the paperback revolution

1937 Russian Politburo issues NKVD Order no. 00447, to repress former kulak and anti-soviets, 269,100 to be arrested, 76,000 to be shot. Part of the Great Purge.

1938 General Metaxas names himself premier of Greece

1942 German SS kills 25,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia

1942 German occupiers set night curfew on Jews in the Netherlands

1945 World War II: The cruiser USS Indianapolis is torpedoed and sunk by Japanese submarine I-58. 883 seamen died, many after being attacked by sharks, the inspiration for the movie Jaws.

1946 First rocket attains 100 mi (167 km) altitude, White Sands, New Mexico

1949 British warship HMS Amethyst escapes down Yangtze River, having been refused a safe passage by Chinese Communists after 3-month standoff

1956 US national motto “In God We Trust” authorized after a joint resolution of the US Congress is signed by President Dwight D Eisenhower

1962 The Trans-Canada Highway, the longest national highway in the world, is officially opened

1966 Striker Geoff Hurst scores a hat trick as England beats West Germany, 4-2 after extra time in FIFA World Cup final at Wembley Stadium in London, England

1970 -Aug 5]       Hurricane Celia, kills 31 in Cuba, Florida and Texas

1971 Japanese All Nippon Airways Boeing 727 collides with a Japanese Air Force F-86 over Morioka, Iwate, Japan killing 162

1971 Apollo program: US Apollo 15 Mission: David Scott & James Irwin on the Apollo Lunar Module Falcon land on the Moon with the first Lunar Rover

1974 House Judiciary Committee votes on 3rd & last charge of “high crimes & misdemeanors” to impeach President Nixon in the Watergate cover-up

1975 US Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in suburban Detroit at about 2:30 pm. He is never seen or heard from again. Hoffa was legally declared dead in 1982

1975 Murtala Mohammed overthrows General Gowon to become Nigerian Head of State

1976 Giulio Andreotti sworn in as premier of Italy for the second time

1980 Vanuatu (New Hebrides) gains independence from Britain & France

1980 Israel’s Knesset passes the Jerusalem Law

1981 As many as 50,000 demonstrators, mostly women and children, took to the streets in Łódź to protest food ration shortages in Communist Poland.

1982 USSR performs underground nuclear Test

1983 Official speed record for a piston-driven aircraft, 832 kph, California

1983 Weight lifter Sergei Didyk of USSR jerks a record 261 kg

1984 Alvenus tanker at Cameron Louisiana, spills 2.8 million gallons of oil

1984 Holly Roffey aged 11 days becomes the youngest ever to receive a heart transplant

1987 An ANC car bomb directed at the headquarters of the Wits Command in Johannesburg South Africa kills 1 person and injures 68

1990 Soldiers opens fire on worshippers in Monrovian church, 200-600 die

1992 Yael Arad becomes Israel’s first ever Olympic medalist when she wins silver in the women’s 61kg judo in Barcelona; 20th anniversary of Munich massacre and 500th anniversary of Alhambra Decree

1994 Record 103.8°F (39.9°C) in Preschen Lausitz Germany

2006 World’s longest running music show “Top of the Pops” is broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. The show aired for 42 years.

2012 Train fire kills 32 and injures 27 people in Andhra Pradesh, India

2012 A power grid failure in Dilhi leaves over 300 million without electricity in northern India

2013 134 people are killed in tribal conflicts in Darfyr, Sudan

2013 Mamnoon Hussain is elected President of Pakistan

2014 Death toll in Gaza reaches 1,346, while 56 Israeli soldiers and 3 civilians were killed

2014 One hundred and fifty people are trapped after a landslide in Maharashtra, India; 20 are killed.

2015 In Bandar Mahshahr, Iran, the temperature reaches 46C (109F), humidity makes it feel like 73C

2016 Air balloon crashes into power lines near Lockhart, Texas, killing all 16 onboard

2017 15 people killed in gunfights with Philippine police, including Reynaldo Parojinog, mayor of Ozamiz in an anti-drug trafficking operation

2017 Hackers reveal they have stolen data from HBO, including episodes and scripts of Games of Thrones