TIME TRAVELING, APRIL 30 1789 George Washington is inaugurated in New York City as the first president of the United States. 1803 The U.S. purchases the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million. 1812 Louisiana is admitted as the 18th U.S. state. 1900 Hawaii becomes an official U.S. territory. 1900 Jonathan Luther “Casey” Jones, an engineer on the Illinois Central Railroad, is killed while trying to stop his passenger train, the Cannonball Express,” before it collides with a stalled freight train on a rainy, foggy night in Mississippi. 1939 Baseball great Lou Gehrig plays his last game with the New York Yankees. 1945 Holed up in a bunker 55 feet below his headquarters in Berlin and facing a siege of the city by the Soviets, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head as his Reich collapses above him. He had married his long-time mistress, Eva Braun, only a day before, and she, too, poisons herself. 1945 Arthur Godfrey begins his morning radio show, Arthur Godfrey Time. It runs until this day in 1972. 1947 The name of Boulder Dam in Nevada, a name used since 1933, is changed back to Hoover Dam. 1970 U.S. troops invade Cambodia to disrupt North Vietnamese Army base areas, an act that leads to widespread protests when it is announced by President Richard Nixon. 1973 As the Watergate scandal heats up, President Richard Nixon announces the resignation of White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, Assistant for Domestic Affairs John Ehrlichman, and other top aides. 1975 Communist North Vietnamese tanks crash through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, South Vietnam, and the war in Vietnam comes to an end. Eleven U.S. Marines lifted off of the U.S. Embassy are the last American soldiers to evacuate. 1984 President Ronald Reagan signs cultural and scientific agreements with China as well as a tax accord making it easier for American companies to operate in China. 1991 An estimated 125,000 people are killed in a cyclone that hits Bangladesh. 1993 Top-ranked women’s tennis player Monica Seles is stabbed in the back while sitting courtside during a changeover in her match against Magdalena Maleeva at the Hamburg Open in Hamburg, Germany. Her assailant, a fan of German tennis star Steffi Graf, who is ranked No. 2, apparently hopes that by injuring Seles his idol will be able to regain her No. 1 ranking. Seles does not play again professionally for two years. Her assailant, Gunter Parche, 38, is convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and receives a two-year suspended sentence.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Apr 2014 05:05:00 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015