Chicago Daily Tribune

ON DECEMBER 30 ...

In 1850 seismologist and geologist John Milne, inventor of the seismograph, was born in Liverpool, England.

In 1853 the United States bought some 45,000 square miles of land from Mexico in a deal known as the Gadsden Purchase.

In 1903 about 600 people died when fire broke out at the recently opened Iroquois Theater in Chicago.

In 1911 Sun Yat-sen was elected the first president of the Republic of China.

In 1916 Grigory Rasputin, the so-called “Mad Monk” who wielded considerable influence with Czar Nicholas II, was killed by a group of Russian noblemen in St. Petersburg.

In 1922 Vladimir Lenin proclaimed the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which lasted nearly seven decades before dissolving in December 1991.

In 1940, California’s first freeway, the Arroyo Seco Parkway connecting Los Angeles and Pasadena, was officially opened.

In 1946 punk rock singer and poet Patti Smith was born in Chicago.

In 1965 Ferdinand Marcos was inaugurated for his first term as president of the Philippines.

In 1972 the United States halted its heavy bombing of North Vietnam.

In 1975 golfer Tiger Woods was born in Cypress, Calif.

In 1978 Ohio State University fired Woody Hayes as its football coach, one day after Hayes punched Clemson University player Charlie Bauman during the Gator Bowl after Bauman intercepted an Ohio State pass.

In 1994 a gunman walked into a pair of suburban Boston abortion clinics and opened fire, killing two employees and wounding five other people.

In 2003 the Bush administration announced it was banning the sale of ephedra, and urged consumers to immediately stop using the herbal stimulant linked to 155 deaths and dozens of heart attacks and strokes.

In 2006 former dictator Saddam Hussein was executed in Baghdad after being convicted in an Iraqi court of crimes against humanity.

In 2013 suicide bombings 19 hours apart left 34 people dead in Volgograd, an industrial city in southern Russia. The bombings raised safety fears ahead of the Sochi Olympic Games in February.