Today in History

April 30

1789 - George Washington becomes the first US President. 1803 - US doubles in size with the purchases of the Louisiana Territory and New Orleans from France.

1824 - Crete is captured by Egyptian allies of the Turks.

1881 - France invades Tunisia from Algeria, and later establishes a protectorate.

1897 - British physicist Joseph Thomson announces the discovery of electrons.

1900 - Hawaii becomes a US territory.

1945 - Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker with his new wife, Eva Braun.

1948 - The Organisation of American States holds its first meeting, in Bogota, Colombia.

1975 - Vietnamese Communist troops take over Saigon, ending Vietnam War.

1979 - Shaikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum is appointed Prime Minister of the UAE.

1981 - A hailstorm with winds reaching 67 knots left a trail of destruction in and around the UAE. 1986 - Indian troops storm Golden Temple complex in Amritsar, Punjab, to flush out terrorists. 1990 - American hostage Frank Reed is freed after four years in the hands of pro-Iranian kidnappers in Lebanon.

1993 - Cern, the creators of the World Wide Web, announces that it could be used for free by anyone. 1994 - Austrian Roland Ratzenberger dies after a highspeed crash during final qualifying for the San Marino Grand Prix. 1998 - A noted Syrian poet, Nizar Qabbani, dies at his London home at the age of 75.

2004 - Ten countries join European Union, the biggest expansion in its 47-year history.

2009 - Qatari Minister of Commerce Shaikh Fahd Bin Jasem Bin Mohammad Al Thani dies in a car accident.

2012 - A double-decker ferry with more than 350 passengers sinks in the Brahmaputra river in Assam, India, killing at least 270 people. 2014 - British actor Bob Hoskins dies after a bout of pneumonia, he was 71. 2015 - singer Ben E. King dies at 76.

2017 - Dubai government launches ‘Dubai Font’, the first typeface developed by Microsoft for a city.