30 January History
- 1649 - Charles I of England is beheaded at Whitehall by the executioner Richard Brandon.
- 1844 - Richard Theodore Greener becomes the first African American to graduate from Harvard University.
- 1862 - The USS Monitor is launched at Greenpoint, Long Island.
- 1901 - Women Prohibitionists smash 12 saloons in Kansas.
- 1912 - The British House of Lords opposes the House of Commons by rejecting home rule for Ireland.
- 1931 - The United States awards civil government to the Virgin Islands.
- 1933 - Adolf Hitler is named Chancellor by President Paul Hindenburg.
- 1936 - Governor Harold Hoffman orders a new inquiry into the Lindbergh kidnapping.
- 1943 - Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus surrenders himself and his staff to Red Army troops in Stalingrad.
- 1945 - The Allies launch a drive on the Siegfried line in Germany.
- 1949 - In India, 100,000 people pray at the site of Gandhi's assassination on the first anniversary of his death.
- 1953 - President Dwight Eisenhower announces that he will pull the Seventh Fleet out of Formosa to permit the Nationalists to attack Communist China.
- 1964 - The Ranger spacecraft, equipped with six TV cameras, is launched to the moon from Cape Canaveral.
- 1972 - British troops shoot dead 14 Irish civilians in Derry, Ireland. The day is forever remembered in Ireland as 'Bloody Sunday.'
- 1976 - The U.S. Supreme Court bans spending limits in campaigns, equating funds with freedom of speech.
- 1980 - The first-ever Chinese Olympic team arrives in New York for the Winter Games at Lake Placid.
30 January Birthdays
- 1882 - Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States.
- 1885 - John Henry Towers, American naval aviation pioneer.
- 1912 - Barbara Tuchman, U.S. historian (The Guns of August).