• Monday, 23 December 2024
Today in history
30 October 2022 (MIA) 1863 – Danish Prince Vilhelm arrives in Athens to assume his throne as George I, King of the Hellenes. 1864 – Second Schleswig War ends. Denmark renounces all claim to Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg, which come under Prussian and Austrian administration. 1888 – Rudd Concession granted by King Lobengula of Matabeleland to agents of Cecil Rhodes led by Charles Rudd. 1890 – The Ohrid middle class has sent a request to authorities in Constantinople asking for a permition to open Macedonian school in the city and its area and to hold the classes in Macedonian. 1894 – Domenico Melegatti obtains a patent for a procedure to be applied in producing pandoro industrially. 1905 – Czar Nicholas II of Russia issues the October Manifesto, granting the Russian peoples basic civil liberties and the right to form a duma. 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. 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 anxiety in some of the audience in the United States. 1941 – World War II: Franklin D. Roosevelt approves U.S. $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations. 1941 – One thousand and five hundred Jews from Pidhaytsi (in western Ukraine) are sent by Nazis to Bełżec extermination camp. 1942 – Lt. Tony Fasson, Able Seaman Colin Grazier and canteen assistant Tommy Brown from HMS Petard board U-559, retrieving material which would lead to the decryption of the German Enigma code. 1944 – Anne and Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they die from disease the following year, shortly before the end of WWII. 1947 – The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which is the foundation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is founded. 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 50 megatons of yield, it remains the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or otherwise. 1961 – Because of “violations of Vladimir 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: Near Da Nang, United States Marines repel an intense attack by Viet Cong forces, killing 56 guerrillas. 1970 – In Vietnam, the worst monsoon to hit the area in six years causes severe floods, kills 293, leaves 200,000 homeless and virtually halts the Vietnam War. 1972 – A collision between two commuter trains in Chicago kills 45 and injures 332. 1973 – The Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosphorus for the second time. 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 (fourth generation) video game console, the PC Engine, which is later sold in other markets under the name TurboGrafx-16. 1993 – The Troubles: The Ulster Defence Association, an Ulster loyalist paramilitary, carry out a mass shooting at a Halloween party in Greysteel, Northern Ireland. Eight civilians are murdered and thirteen wounded. 1994 – Macedonia votes in its second parliamentary elections since declaring independence. 1995 – The Council of European Ministers green lights a decision on including Macedonia in the structure of FARE program, designed for the countries in Central and Eastern Europe. 1995 – Quebec citizens narrowly vote (50.58% to 49.42%) in favour of remaining a province of Canada in their second referendum on national sovereignty. 2005 – The rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II) is reconsecrated after a thirteen-year rebuilding project. 2013 – Forty-five people die after a bus fuel tank catches fire in the Indian city of Mahabubnagar. 2014 – Sweden is the first European Union member state to officially recognize the State of Palestine. 2015 – 64 people are killed and more than 147 injuries after a fire in a nightclub in the Romanian capital Bucharest.