Events on July 30 42
Year 1419
First Defenestration of Prague: A crowd of radical Hussites kill seven members of the Prague city council.
Year 1502
Christopher Columbus lands at Guanaja in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras during his fourth voyage.
Year 1609
Beaver Wars: At Ticonderoga (now Crown Point, New York), Samuel de Champlain shoots and kills two Iroquois chiefs on behalf of his native allies.
Year 1619
In Jamestown, Virginia, the first representative assembly in the Americas, the House of Burgesses, convenes for the first time.
Year 1635
Eighty Years' War: The Siege of Schenkenschans begins; Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, begins the recapture of the strategically important fortress from the Spanish Army.
Year 1656
Swedish forces under the command of King Charles X Gustav defeat the forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the Battle of Warsaw.
Year 1676
Nathaniel Bacon issues the "Declaration of the People of Virginia", beginning Bacon's Rebellion against the rule of Governor William Berkeley.
Year 1733
The first Masonic Grand Lodge in the future United States is constituted in Massachusetts.
Year 1756
In Saint Petersburg, Bartolomeo Rastrelli presents the newly built Catherine Palace to Empress Elizabeth and her courtiers.
Year 1811
Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, leader of the Mexican insurgency, is executed by the Spanish in Chihuahua City, Mexico.
Year 1863
American Indian Wars: Representatives of the United States and tribal leaders including Chief Pocatello (of the Shoshone) sign the Treaty of Box Elder.
Year 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.
Year 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.
Year 1866
Armed Confederate veterans in New Orleans riot against a meeting of Radical Republicans, killing 48 people and injuring another 100.
Year 1912
Japan's Emperor Meiji dies and is succeeded by his son Yoshihito, who is now known as the Emperor Taishō.
Year 1932
Premiere of Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees, the first cartoon short to use Technicolor and the first Academy Award winning cartoon short.
Year 1945
World War II: Japanese submarine I-58 sinks the USS Indianapolis, killing 883 seamen. Most die during the following four days, until an aircraft notices the survivors.
Year 1956
A joint resolution of the U.S. Congress is signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorizing In God we trust as the U.S. national motto.
Year 1962
The Trans-Canada Highway, the longest national highway in the world, is officially opened.
Year 1965
U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid.
Year 1966
England defeats West Germany to win the 1966 FIFA World Cup at Wembley Stadium after extra time.
Year 1969
Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon makes an unscheduled visit to South Vietnam and meets with President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu and U.S. military commanders.
Year 1971
Apollo program: Apollo 15 Mission: David Scott and James Irwin on the Apollo Lunar Module Falcon land on the Moon with the first Lunar Rover.
Year 1971
An All Nippon Airways Boeing 727 and a Japanese Air Force F-86 collide over Morioka, Iwate, Japan killing 162.
Year 1974
Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon releases subpoenaed White House recordings after being ordered to do so by the Supreme Court of the United States.
Year 1975
Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He is never seen or heard from again.
Year 1978
The 730 (transport), Okinawa Prefecture changes its traffic on the right-hand side of the road to the left-hand side.
Year 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.
Year 2006
The world's longest running music show Top of the Pops is broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. The show had aired for 42 years.
Year 2012
A train fire kills 32 passengers and injures 27 on the Tamil Nadu Express in Andhra Pradesh, India.
Year 2012
A power grid failure in Delhi leaves more than 300 million people without power in northern India.
Year 2014
One hundred and fifty people are trapped after a landslide in Maharashtra, India; 20 are killed.