TODAY IN HISTORY

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

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 ended up losing to Woodrow Wilson.)

In 1961, the Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb, the “Tsar Bomba,” with a force estimated at about 50 megatons. Also: 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 1974, Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15-round bout in Kinshasa, Zaire, known as the “Rumble in the Jungle,” to regain his world heavyweight title.

In 1985, schoolteacherastronaut 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 2001, Ukraine destroyed its last nuclear missile silo, giving up the nuclear arsenal it had inherited from the former Soviet Union.

In 2005, the body of Rosa Parks arrived at the U.S. Capitol, where the civil rights icon became the first woman to lie in honor in the Rotunda; President George W. Bush and congressional leaders paused to lay wreaths.