TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Tuesday, Oct. 30, the 303rd day of 2018.

TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT

On Oct. 30, 1735 (New Style calendar), the second president of the United States, John Adams, was born in Braintree, Massachusetts.

ON THIS DATE

In 1912, Vice President James S. Sherman, running for a second term of office with President William Howard Taft, died six days before Election Day. (Sherman was replaced with Nicholas Murray Butler, but Taft, the Republican candidate, ended up losing in an Electoral College landslide to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.)

In 1944, the Martha Graham ballet “Appalachian Spring,” with music by Aaron Copland, premiered at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., with Graham in a leading role.

In 1961, the Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb, the “Tsar Bomba,” with a force estimated at about 50 megatons. The Soviet Party Congress unanimously approved a resolution ordering the removal of Josef Stalin’s body from Lenin’s tomb.

In 1972, 45 people were killed when an Illinois Central Gulf commuter train was struck from behind by another train on Chicago’s South Side.

In 1975, the New York Daily News ran the headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead” a day after President Gerald R. Ford said he would veto any proposed federal bailout of New York City.

In 1979, President Carter announced his choice of federal appeals judge Shirley Hufstedler to head the newly created Department of Education.

In 1985, school teacher astronaut Christa McAuliffe witnessed the launch of the space shuttle Challenger, the same craft that would carry her and six other crew members to their deaths in Jan. 1986.

In 1995, by a razor-thin vote of 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent, Federalists prevailed over separatists in a Quebec secession referendum.

In 2002, Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizell), a rapper with the hip-hop group Run-DMC, was killed in a shooting in New York. He was 37.

Ten years ago: A federal jury in Miami convicted the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor in the first case brought under a 1994 U.S. law allowing prosecution for torture and atrocities committed overseas. (Charles McArthur Emmanuel was later sentenced to 97 years in prison.) Five years ago: President Barack Obama claimed“full responsibility”for fixing his administration’s troubled health insurance website, while on Capitol Hill, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius apologized to frustrated people trying to sign up, declaring that she was accountable for the failures but also defended the historic health care overhaul.

One year ago: Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and a former Manafort business associate, Rick Gates, were indicted on felony charges including conspiracy against the United States as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election revealed its first targets.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

“All men are almost led to believe not of proof, but by attraction.” — Blaise Pascal, French philosopher (16231662).

— ASSOCIATED PRESS