On This Day — 30 July

2025

A magnitude 8.8 earthquake hits Russia, causing tsunamis over the Pacific Ocean.

2025 Kamchatka earthquake

2024

A series of landslides occurs in Kerala, India, causing over 420 fatalities.

2024 Wayanad landslides

2020

NASA's Mars 2020 mission was launched on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Mars 2020

2014

Twenty killed and 150 are trapped after a landslide in Maharashtra, India.

2014 Malin landslide

2012

A train fire kills 32 passengers and injures 27 on the Tamil Nadu Express in Andhra Pradesh, India.

Nellore train fire

2012

A power grid failure in Delhi leaves more than 300 million people without power in northern India.

2012 India blackouts

2011

Marriage of Queen Elizabeth II's eldest granddaughter Zara Phillips to former rugby union footballer Mike Tindall.

Zara Tindall

2006

The world's longest running music show Top of the Pops is broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. The show had aired for 42 years.

Top of the Pops

2006

An Israeli airstrike kills 28 Lebanese civilians, including 16 children.

2006 Qana airstrike

2003

In Mexico, the last 'old style' Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line.

Volkswagen Beetle

2003

Three years after the death the last Pyrenean ibex, Celia, a clone of her is born only to subsequently die from lung defects. Within minutes, the Pyrenean ibex becomes the first and so-far only species to have ever gone de-extinct as well as go extinct twice.

Pyrenean ibex

1990

Ian Gow, Conservative Member of Parliament, is assassinated at his home by the IRA in a car bombing after he assured the group that the British government would never surrender to them.

Ian Gow

1981

As many as 50,000 demonstrators, mostly women and children, took to the streets in Łódź to protest food ration shortages in Communist Poland.

Łódź

1980

Vanuatu gains independence.

Vanuatu

1980

Israel's Knesset passes the Jerusalem Law.

Knesset

1978

The 730: Okinawa Prefecture changes its traffic on the right-hand side of the road to the left-hand side.

730 (transport)

1975

Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He is never seen or heard from again.

Jimmy Hoffa

1971

Apollo program: On Apollo 15, David Scott and James Irwin in the Apollo Lunar Module Falcon land on the Moon with the first Lunar Rover.

Apollo program

1971

An All Nippon Airways Boeing 727 and a Japanese Air Force F-86 collide over Morioka, Iwate, Japan, killing 162.

All Nippon Airways

1969

Vietnam War: U.S. president Richard Nixon makes an unscheduled visit to South Vietnam and meets with President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu and U.S. military commanders.

Vietnam War

1966

England defeats West Germany to win the FIFA World Cup at Wembley Stadium 4–2 after extra time.

England national football team

1965

U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid.

Lyndon B. Johnson

1962

The Trans-Canada Highway, the then-longest national highway in the world, is officially opened.

Trans-Canada Highway

1956

A joint resolution of the U.S. Congress is signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorizing In God We Trust as the U.S. national motto.

Joint resolution

1945

World War II: Japanese submarine I-58 sinks the USS Indianapolis, killing 883 seamen. Most die during the following four days, until an aircraft notices the survivors.

World War II

1932

Premiere of Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees, the first cartoon short to use Technicolor and the first Academy Award winning cartoon short.

Walt Disney

1930

In Montevideo, Uruguay wins the first FIFA World Cup by beating Argentina.

Montevideo

1916

The Black Tom explosion in New York Harbor kills four and destroys some $20,000,000 worth of military goods.

Black Tom explosion

1912

Japan's Emperor Meiji dies and is succeeded by his son Yoshihito, who is now known as the Emperor Taishō.

Emperor Meiji

1871

The Staten Island Ferry Westfield's boiler explodes, killing over 85 people.

Staten Island Ferry

1866

Armed Confederate veterans in New Orleans riot against a meeting of Radical Republicans, killing 48 people and injuring another 100.

New Orleans Massacre of 1866

1865

The steamboat Brother Jonathan sinks off the coast of Crescent City, California, killing 225 passengers, the deadliest shipwreck on the Pacific Coast of the U.S. at the time.

Steamboat

1864

American Civil War: Battle of the Crater: Union forces attempt to break Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia by exploding a large bomb under their trenches.

American Civil War

1863

American Indian Wars: Representatives of the United States and tribal leaders including Chief Pocatello (of the Shoshone) sign the Treaty of Box Elder.

American Indian Wars

1863

Valuev Circular banned the publication of religious, educational and training books in Ukrainian in the Russian Empire.

Valuev Circular

1859

First ascent of Grand Combin, one of the highest summits in the Alps.

Grand Combin

1811

Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, leader of the Mexican insurgency, is executed by the Spanish in Chihuahua City, Mexico.

Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

1756

In Saint Petersburg, Bartolomeo Rastrelli presents the newly built Catherine Palace to Empress Elizabeth and her courtiers.

Saint Petersburg

1733

The first Masonic Grand Lodge in the future United States is constituted in Massachusetts.

Freemasonry

1729

Founding of Baltimore, Maryland.

Baltimore

1676

Nathaniel Bacon issues the "Declaration of the People of Virginia", beginning Bacon's Rebellion against the rule of Governor William Berkeley.

Nathaniel Bacon (Virginia colonist)

1656

The Battle of Warsaw ends with a Swedish-Brandenburger victory over a larger Polish-Lithuanian force.

Battle of Warsaw (1656)

1645

English Civil War: Scottish Covenanter forces under the Earl of Leven launch the Siege of Hereford, a remaining Royalist stronghold.

English Civil War

1635

Eighty Years' War: The Siege of Schenkenschans begins; Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, begins the recapture of the strategically important fortress from the Spanish Army.

Eighty Years' War

1627

An earthquake kills about 5,000 people in Gargano, Italy.

1627 Gargano earthquake

1619

In Jamestown, Virginia, the first Colonial European representative assembly in the Americas, the Virginia General Assembly, convenes for the first time.

Jamestown, Virginia

1609

Beaver Wars: At Ticonderoga (now Crown Point, New York), Samuel de Champlain shoots and kills two Iroquois chiefs on behalf of his native allies.

Beaver Wars

1502

Christopher Columbus lands at Guanaja in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras during his fourth voyage.

Voyages of Christopher Columbus

1419

First Defenestration of Prague: A crowd of radical Hussites kill seven members of the Prague city council.

Defenestrations of Prague

762

Baghdad is founded.

Baghdad