July 30
762 –
Baghdad is founded by caliph
Al-Mansur.
1608 – At
Ticonderoga (now Crown Point, New York),
Samuel de Champlain shoots and kills two
Iroquois chiefs. This was to set the tone for French-Iroquois relations for the next one hundred years.
1626 – An
earthquake in Naples, Italy kills about 10,000 people.
1729 – Founding of
Baltimore, Maryland.
1733 – The first
Masonic Grand Lodge in the future United States is constituted in Massachusetts.
1864 – American Civil War:
Battle of the Crater (
<--interesting read): Union forces attempt to break Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia by exploding a large bomb under their trenches.
1916 –
Black Tom Island explosion in Jersey City, New Jersey.
1945 – World War II:
Japanese submarine I-58 sinks the
USS Indianapolis, killing 883 seamen.
1962 – The
Trans-Canada Highway, the longest national highway in the world, is officially opened.
1965 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the
Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing
Medicare and
Medicaid.
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.
1990 –
George Steinbrenner is forced by
Commissioner Fay Vincent to resign as principal partner of New York Yankees for hiring Howie Spira to "get dirt" on
Dave Winfield.
2003 – In Mexico, the last 'old style'
Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line.
2005 - A new book published to mark the 35th anniversary of the death of
Jimi Hendrix claimed the guitarist pretended to be gay so he would be discharged from the army. '
Room Full of Mirrors' by
Charles Cross said army records showed Hendrix was discharged from the
101st Airborne Division aged 19 in 1962 for "homosexual tendencies."
2012 – A
power grid failure in Delhi leaves more than
300 million people without power in northern India.
Births
1818 – Emily Brontė; 1855 – Georg Wilhelm von Siemens (Siemens AG); 1863 – Henry Ford; 1881 –
Smedley Butler (at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history); 1890 – Casey Stengel; 1922 – Henry W. Bloch (co-founded H&R Block); 1927 – Richard Johnson; 1929 – Sid Krofft; 1933 – Edd Byrnes; 1934 – Bud Selig;
1936 – Buddy Guy
; 1938 – Terry O'Neill; 1939 – Peter Bogdanovich; 1941 – Paul Anka♪ ♫; 1945 – David Sanborn♪ ♫; 1946 – Neil Bonnett
; 1947 – William Atherton, Arnold Schwarzenegger; 1948 – Jean Reno; 1949 –
Duck Baker; 1954 – Ken Olin; 1956 – Delta Burke, Anita Hill; 1958 – Kate Bush♪ ♫; 1960 – Richard Linklater; 1961 – Laurence Fishburne; 1963 – Lisa Kudrow; 1964 – Vivica A. Fox; 1968 – Terry Crews; 1969 – Simon Baker (
The Mentalist); 1970 – Christopher Nolan; 1971 – Elvis Crespo♪ ♫, Tom Green, Christine Taylor ('Marcia Brady' in
The Brady Bunch Movie); 1974 – Hilary Swank; 1977 – Misty May-Treanor, Jaime Pressly; 1980 - Seth Avett (The Avett Bros)
Deaths
1718 – William Penn; 1875 – George Pickett; 1898 – Otto von Bismarck; 1918 – Joyce Kilmer; 1992 – Joe Shuster (created Superman); 1996 – Claudette Colbert; 1998 – Buffalo Bob Smith (host
Howdy Doody Show); 2003 – Sam Phillips; 2007 – Ingmar Bergman, Bill Walsh; 2015 – Lynn Anderson♪ ♫