Historical Events on October 30

  • 1485: Henry VII is crowned King of England.
  • 1657: During the Anglo-Spanish War, Spanish forces attempt to retake Jamaica at the Battle of Ocho Rios but fail.
  • 1806: General Lasalle manages to get Prussian Lieutenant General Friedrich von Romberg to surrender the city of Stettin – even though Lasalle only has a force of 800 men and Friedrich von Romberg had a force of over 5,000 men.
  • 1894: A patent is given to Domenico Melegatti for his procedure in mass producing pandoro – an Italian sweet yeast bread.
  • 1938: The now famous radio play of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds is broadcast by Orson Welles on this day.
  • 1941: During World War II, $1 billion dollars in Lend-Lease Aid is approved for the Allied nations.
  • 1941: The Nazis send over fifteen hundred Jews from Pidhaytsi in Western Ukraine to the Belzec Extermination Camp.
  • 1944: Anne Frank and Margo Frank are deported to the  Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp from Auschwitz. Within the next year, right before the conclusion of World War II, they’ll both die from disease.
  • 1945: Jackie Robinson signs a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers. This makes him the first African-American baseball player in history to play in the Major League Baseball.
  • 1974: Muhammad Ali and George Foreman take part in a boxing match that is known as The Rumble in the Jungle in Kinshasa, Zaire. It’s Foreman’s first professional defeat and Ali regains the title of World Heavyweight Champion.
  • 1985: The Space Shuttle Challenges takes off for mission STS-61.

Famous Birthdays on October 30

  • American lawyer, politician and 2nd President of the United States, John Adams is born in 1735.
  • French-English painter Alfred Sisley is born in 1839.
  • French-Swiss physician and neurologist Georges Gilles de la Tourette is born in 1857.
  • French poet Paul Valery is born in 1871.
  • American poet and critic Ezra Pound is born in 1885.
  • American author and poet Zoe Akins is born in 1886.
  • Italian-American bodybuilder Charles Atlas is born in 1893.
  • German bacteriologist, pathologist and Nobel Prize laureate, Gerhard Domagk is born in 1895.
  • American physiologist, physician and Nobel Prize laureate, Dickinson W. Richards is born in 1895.
  • American singer-songwriter Grace Slick is born in 1939.
  • English author Jean Chapman is born in 1939.
  • American biologist and Nobel Prize laureate Leland H. Hartwell is born in 1939.