NOW & THEN
30 AUGUST
1645: Dutch and native Americans made treaty of peace at New Amsterdam, New York.
1895: Compulsory Roman Catholic education began in Belgian state schools.
1860: The first tramway in Britain opened, at Birkenhead on Merseyside.
1898: British-german secret agreement on African territories of Portugal, whereby Britain was leased Delagoa Bay and Germany was to receive parts of Mozambique and Angola.
1900: Bubonic plague was reported in Glasgow.
1901: Vacuum cleaner was patented by Hubert Cecil Booth.
1905: Alberta became a province of Canada.
1914: German forces took Amiens in France.
1928: Independence of India League was formed.
1930: The 14.9hp Morris Major car was unveiled. It was made at the Cowley Works, Oxford, and cost £215.
1937: Welshman Tommy Farr became the first boxer to take American Joe Louis the full distance in a title fight.
1941: The siege of Leningrad by German forces began. It ended in January 1943.
1945: Hong Kong was reoccupied by the British after four years of Japanese occupation.
1951: United States and the Philippines signed mutual defence pact.
1952: Avro Vulcan, the first delta-winged bomber, made its maiden flight.
1960: East Germany imposed partial blockade of West Berlin.
1966: China’s Red Guards, their ranks swelled to half a million, demonstrated outside Soviet Embassy in Peking for second day.
1981: Iran’s president and prime minister were killed when bomb exploded in government offices in Tehran.
1987: Philippines president Corazon Aquino said mutinous troops wanted to kill her entire family in bloody coup attempt.
1989: Buckingham Palace confirmed that the Princess Royal and Captain Mark Phillips were to separate.
1991: Liz Mccolgan ran away from the field at the Tokyo World Athletics championships to win the 10,000 metres by more than 20 seconds.1994: Britain’s Mark Nyman clinched the World Scrabble Championship in New York with the word ‘wet’ (20 points).
1995: Nato forces launched one of the biggest air raids since the Second World War when they attacked Serbian gun positions that had been shelling Sarajevo.
1996: Former world heavyweight champion Frank Bruno retired from the ring after a doctor’s warning over his eyesight.
2007: Manchester suffered its sixth earthquake of August. The latest tremor measured 2.4 on the Richter scale.
2009: Dame Vera Lynn, at 92 years of age, became the oldest living artist to make it into the top 20 of the UK albums chart.
2010: Hundreds of air travellers had flights disrupted after a power failure hit Aberdeen Airport.
2017: The £1.35 billion Queensferry Crossing opened.