A crowd crush killed 45 people during the annual pilgrimage to the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in Israel.
30 April 1723
A Friday in history
Weekday
Friday
Season
Spring (N. Hemisphere)
Century
18th century
Records
374
2021
2014A bomb blast in Ürümqi, China, killed three people and injured 79 others.
2009A Dutch man drove his car at high speed into a parade in an attempt to kill the Dutch royal family.
2004The New Yorker published an online article and photographs detailing accounts of torture and abuse by American military personnel of Iraqi prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
2000Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun whose apparitions of Jesus inspired the Catholic devotion to the Divine Mercy, was canonized by Pope John Paul II.
- 1994
Riverdance was performed for the first time, as the interval act for the Eurovision Song Contest.
1982Sixteen monks and a nun of the Hindu organisation Ananda Marga were beaten to death and set on fire in Calcutta, India.
1975American forces completed a helicopter evacuation of U.S. citizens, South Vietnamese civilians and others from Saigon, just before North Vietnamese troops captured the city and ended the Vietnam War.
1963A refusal by the Bristol Omnibus Company and the Transport and General Workers' Union to permit the employment of black bus crews led to a bus boycott in Bristol, England.
1945World War II: As Allied forces closed in on Berlin, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler committed suicide in the Führerbunker with Eva Braun one day after their marriage.
1943Second World War: The Royal Navy submarine HMS Seraph began Operation Mincemeat to deceive Germany about the upcoming invasion of Sicily.
1927The Federal Industrial Institute for Women opened near Alderson, West Virginia, as the first federal prison for women in the United States.
1927Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford became the first two celebrities to make imprints of their hands and feet in cement at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California.
1897British physicist J. J. Thomson and his team announce the discovery of the electron.
1894A crowd of workers, unemployed due to the Panic of 1893, concluded the first significant popular protest march on Washington D.C.
1883New York governor Grover Cleveland signed legislation that led to the creation of Niagara Falls State Park, the United States' first state park.
1803The United States purchased France's claim to the Louisiana Territory for 80 million francs, or less than US$.03 per acre ($.07/ha).
1789George Washington (pictured) took the oath of office as the first president of the United States at Federal Hall in New York City.
1006SN 1006, the brightest supernova in recorded history, first appeared in the constellation Lupus.
313Civil wars of the Tetrarchy: An outnumbered army led by Roman emperor Licinius defeated his rival Maximinus II's forces at the Battle of Tzirallum.
311The Diocletianic Persecution of Christians officially ended in the eastern Roman Empire.
Photo archive
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