NOW & THEN
30 JANUARY
1647: Scots handed over King Charles I to parliamentary forces.
1790: The first purpose-built lifeboat, named The Original, launched at South Shields on the River Tyne.
1840: Emperor of China forbade all trade with Britain.
1857: The naval uniform for ratings in the Royal Navy was authorised.
1858: The Hallé Orchestra, Manchester, performed its first public concert.
1889: Crown Prince Archduke Rudolf of Austria and his lover, Baroness Marie Vetsera, 17, were found dead at the royal hunting lodge of Mayerling, near Vienna. It was never properly determined whether it was a double suicide or murder.
1902: Britain signed treaty with Japan providing for independence of China and Korea.
1933: Adolf Hitler was appointed German chancellor.
1951: Film star Elizabeth Taylor, 19, divorced her first husband, Nicky Hilton, in Los Angeles.
1957: United Nations called on South Africa to reconsider its apartheid policy.
1965: State funeral of Sir Winston Churchill. Big Ben was silenced and his body was taken for burial in Bladon churchyard in a Battle of Britain Class locomotive 34051, named Winston Churchill.
1972: Bloody Sunday in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, when 13 protest marchers were killed by British paratroopers.
1972: Pakistan left the British Commonwealth.
1979: White Rhodesians approved new constitution to give blacks eventual control of the nation.
1986: President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines pledged to relinquish power peacefully if he lost to Corazon Aquino in the election due on 7 February.
1989: United States closed its embassy in besieged Afghan capital of Kabul.
1989: Temperatures in Alaska plummeted to 80F below zero and many Eskimos were so cold they were forced to leave the area.
1990: Weightlifter Ricky Chaplin of Wales was stripped of his Commonwealth Games gold medal after a positive drugs test.
1990: Communist Party lost majority in Czechoslovak parliament, which it dominated for four decades.
1990: Nineteen seamen were lost when the freighter Flag Theofana sank in the English Channel.
1991: American and Iraqi troops clashed in first ground battle of Gulf war at Khafji, as Iraqi tanks probed Kuwait-saudi border.
1992: Estate agent Stephanie Slater was released after being held captive for eight days by a kidnapper. A £175,000 ransom was paid.
1992: United States military announced it would halt or cut back operations at 83 military sites in Europe.
1996: Islanders on Eigg called on their landlord, German artist Marlin Eckhard Maruma, to fulfil his promise to invest £15 million in the island or get out.
2000: Off the coast of Ivory Coast, Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 169.
2011: Scottish tennis player Andy Murray lost his third grand slam final, this one in Australia in straight sets to Novak Djokovic.