ON JULY 30 ...
In 1619, the first representative assembly in the American colonies met in Jamestown, Va. (It enacted laws against idleness, drunkenness and gambling.)
In 1718 Quaker leader and Pennsylvania founder William Penn died in Buckinghamshire, England; he was 73.
In 1729 the city of Baltimore was founded.
In 1880 Robert McCormick, who would become the editor and publisher of the Tribune, was born in Chicago.
In 1889 Vladimir Zworykin, considered to be the “father of television” for having invented the iconoscope, was born in Murom, Russia.
In 1932 the Olympic Games opened in Los Angeles.
In 1936 blues guitarist Buddy Guy was born in Lettsworth, La.
In 1945, during World War II, the battle cruiser USS Indianapolis, which had just delivered components for the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine; only 316 out of 1,196 men survived the sinking and the shark-infested waters.
In 1965, as former President Harry Truman looked on, President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law at a ceremony in Independence, Mo., Truman’s hometown. (The act took effect in 1966.)
In 1975, outside a suburban Detroit restaurant, former Teamsters union President Jimmy Hoffa was seen in public for the last time. Also in 1975 representatives of 35 countries convened in Finland for a conference on security and human rights that resulted in the Helsinki Accords.
In 1980 the Israeli Knesset passed a law reaffirming all of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state.
In 1996 a federal law enforcement source said security guard Richard Jewell had become a focus of the investigation into the bombing at Centennial Olympic Park; Jewell later was cleared. Also in 1996 actress Claudette Colbert died in Barbados; she was 92.
In 2002 U.S. Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, was sentenced to eight years in prison for corruption. Also in 2002 WNBA player Lisa Leslie became the first woman to dunk in a professional basketball game.
In 2004 leaders of the Sept. 11 commission urged senators to embrace their proposals for massive changes to the nation’s intelligence structure.
In 2013 a military judge convicted Pfc. Bradley Manning, 25, under the Espionage Act but not guilty of aiding the enemy during his court-martial at Fort Meade, Md. (He was later sentenced to 35 years in prison. He also changed his name to Chelsea.) Also in 2013 Harry F. Byrd Jr., former U.S. senator from Virginia, died in Winchester, Va.; he was 98.
In 2016 a hot air balloon crashed into a pasture in central Texas, killing all 16 on board and becoming the worst such disaster in U.S. history.