Today in history

Today is Monday, April 30, the 120th day of 2018. There are 245 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:

1657 — An English fleet defeats a Spanish fleet off

Santa Cruz on Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

1789 — George Washington is inaugurated as first

president of the United States.

1803 — The US purchases the Louisiana Territory

and New Orleans from the French.

1804 — Shrapnel, named after the British soldier Henry Shrapnel, is used for the first time in warfare by the British against the Dutch in Suriname.

1815 — Alexander I, emperor of Russia, adopts the

title of King of Poland.

1824 — Crete, in rebellion against Turkey along with the rest of Greece, is captured by Egyptian allies of the Turks.

1853 — The proclamation is made of Otago electoral boundaries, and the constitution of the general assembly and the Otago Provincial Council.

1865 — New Zealand’s governor between December 1843 and and November 1845, Captain Robert FitzRoy, commits suicide in England.

1900 — Hawaii becomes a territory of the US; Legendary American railway engineer Casey Jones dies while trying to stop his train, the Cannonball Express, in an attempt to save the lives of passengers before it collided with a stalled freight train near Vaughan, Mississippi.

His death in the crash was the only fatality.