NOW & THEN
30 APRIL
1772: Dial weighing machine was patented by John Clais.
1789: George Washington was inaugurated as the first president of the United States.
1803: United States purchased Louisiana from France.
1804: Shrapnel was first used in warfare, by the British against the Dutch in Surinam.
1891: Gaelic group An Comunn Gàidhealach was instituted.
1900: Casey Jones, American driver of the Cannonball, died at the throttle of his engine slowing down the train to save the passengers’ lives. His courageous deed inspired a song that earned the composers $250,000, plus a TV series.
1906: Numbers were given to bus routes in London.
1938: The cup final from Wembley, shown on the BBC, was the first football match to be televised live in Britain.
1944: The first of 500,000 prefabricated homes (prefabs) went on show in London.
1945: German Führer Adolf Hitler shot himself in his underground bunker in Berlin.
1958: First London performance of My Fair Lady musical.
1964: BBC2 debuted.
1966: First regular cross-channel hovercraft service started between Ramsgate and Calais.
1972: Brighton Belle luxury express made its last journey from Victoria, London.
1975: The Vietnam War ended – the longest conflict in the 20th century.
1979: Prince Charles opened London’s Jubilee Underground Line.
1980: Terrorists took 20 hostages at Iranian Embassy in London.
1986: Soviet Union admitted a nuclear reactor was ablaze at Chernobyl – four days after the event.
1990: Ten airmen killed when RAF Shackleton plunged into hillside on Harris.
1990: The Commons rejected a national dog registration scheme by 275 to 263.
1990: American hostage Frank Reed was released in Beirut after three years and six months.
1993: Tennis star Monica Seles was stabbed by a spectator claiming to be a Steffi Graf fan at a tournament in Germany.
1999: A neo-fascist group, the White Wolves, claimed responsibility after a nail-bomb killed three people and injured more than 130 others in a gay pub in London’s Soho.
2004: United States media released graphic photos of American soldiers abusing and sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
2007: Five men who plotted to kill hundreds of people with a 600kg fertiliser bomb were jailed for almost 100 years at the longest terror trial held in Britain.
2009: A ceremony was held in Basra to mark the official end of the six-year British military presence in Iraq.
2009: A car driver crashed into crowds watching a Dutch royal parade, killing five people, in an attempted attack on the Royal Family. The driver died the next day in hospital.
2014: Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams was arrested over the IRA abduction and killing of mother of ten Jean Mcconville in Belfast in 1972.
BIRTHDAYS
DICKIE DAVIES Sports broadcaster, 86 Dame Jane Campion, New Zealand film director, 65; Kirsten Dunst, US actress, 37; King Carl Gustaf XVI of Sweden, 73; Tony Harrison, British poet, 82; Emma Pierson, British actress, 38; Baron Sanderson of Bowden, chairman, Scottish Conservative Party 1990-93, 86; Merrill Osmond, American singer and bassist, 66; Leigh Francis (aka Avid Merrion and Keith Lemon), comic, 46.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1822 Hannibal Goodwin, Episcopalian minister, pioneer of celluloid roll film; 1883 Jaroslav Hasek, Czechoslovak author (The Good Soldier Schweik); 1893 Joachim von Ribbentrop, politician; 1943 Bobby Vee, American singer; 1947 Leslie Grantham, British actor. Deaths: 1883 Édouard Manet, Impressionist painter; 1912 Wilbur Wright, aviation pioneer; 1943 Beatrice Webb, writer and socialist; 1945 Adolf Hitler, Nazi dictator (suicide; with Eva Braun, whom he had married the previous day); 1985 Sir Max Aitken, newspaper publisher; 1994 Roland Ratzenberger, F1 racing driver; 2009 Maurice Lindsay, Glasgow-born broadcaster, writer and poet; 2015 Ben E King, American soul singer (the Drifters).