June 30
1520 – Spanish conquistadors led by
Hernán Cortés fight their way out of
Tenochtitlan.
1559 –
King Henry II of France is mortally wounded in a jousting match against
Gabriel, comte de Montgomery.
1859 – French acrobat
Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope.
1864 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln grants
Yosemite Valley to California for "public use, resort and recreation".
1882 –
Charles J. Guiteau is hanged in Washington, D.C. for the assassination of
U.S. President James Garfield.
1905 – Albert Einstein sends the article
On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, in which he introduces
special relativity, for publication in
Annalen der Physik.
1906 – The United States Congress passes the
Meat Inspection Act and
Pure Food and Drug Act.
1908 – A
massive explosion occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, knocking down over 80 million trees covering 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi).
1912 –
The Regina Cyclone hits Regina, Saskatchewan, killing 28. It remains Canada's deadliest tornado event.
1921 –
U.S. President Warren G. Harding appoints
former President William Howard Taft Chief Justice of the United States.
1934 – The
Night of the Long Knives, Adolf Hitler's violent purge of his political rivals in Germany, takes place.
1937 – The world's first emergency telephone number,
999, is introduced in London.
1953 – The first
Chevrolet Corvette rolls off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan.
1956 – A TWA
Super Constellation and a United Airlines
DC-7 collide above the Grand Canyon in Arizona and crash, killing all 128 on board both airliners.
1959 – A United States Air Force
F-100 Super Sabre from Kadena Air Base, Okinawa,
crashes into a nearby elementary school, killing 11 students plus six residents from the local neighborhood.
1971 – The crew of the
Soviet Soyuz 11 spacecraft are killed when their air supply escapes through a faulty valve.
1976 - Police raid the home of
Neil Diamond searching for drugs, they find less than one ounce of marijuana.
Stuart Goddard, (Adam Ant), placed the following ad in the classified section of
Melody Maker, 'Beat on a bass, with the B-Sides.'
Andy Warren answered the ad and the pair went on to form
Adam and The Ants.
1977 -
Marvel Comics launched a
comic book based on the rock group KISS.
1985 – Thirty-nine American hostages from the hijacked
TWA Flight 847 are freed in Beirut after being held for 17 days.
1989 - Police were called in to control over 4,000
Bobby Brown fans trying to see him at the
HMV Record store in London's Oxford Street, six fans were hospitalized and one had to be resuscitated.
1990 - Police raid
Chuck Berry's estate and seize homemade porn videos, drugs and guns.
1995 - American soul singer
Phyllis Hyman committed suicide by overdosing on pentobarbital and secobarbital in her New York City apartment aged 45. She was found hours before she was scheduled to perform at the
Apollo Theatre, in New York.
2000 -
Eight men were trampled to death during
Pearl Jam's performance at the
Roskilde Festival, near Copenhagen. Police said the victims had all slipped or fallen in the mud in front of the stage.
2013 – Nineteen firefighters
die controlling a wildfire in Yarnell, Arizona.
2015 – A
Hercules C-130 military aircraft with 113 people on board
crashes in a residential area in the Indonesian city of Medan, resulting in at least 116 deaths.
2016 –
Rodrigo Duterte was sworn into office as the 16th President of the Philippines.
Births
1889 – Archibald Frazer-Nash (founder of
Frazer Nash automobiles); 1891 – Man Mountain Dean; 1906 – Anthony Mann (director); 1917 – Susan Hayward, Lena Horne; 1934 – Harry Blackstone Jr.; 1942 – Robert Ballard; 1956 – David Alan Grier; 1957 – Sterling Marlin (ret'd NASCAR driver); 1959 – Vincent D'Onofrio; 1963 – Rupert Graves, Yngwie Malmsteen; 1966 – Mike Tyson
; 1968 – Phil Anselmo (Pantera); 1971 – Monica Potter; 1983 - Cheryl Cole; 1984 – Fantasia Barrino; 1985 – Michael Phelps, T-Pain
Deaths
1882 – Charles J. Guiteau (assassin); 1961 – Lee de Forest (invented the
audion tube); 2001 – Chet Atkins; 2003 – Buddy Hackett; 2014 – Paul Mazursky