30 June History


Month:                           Date:     

  • 1520    -    Montezuma II is murdered as Spanish conquistadors flee the Aztec capital of Tenochtilan during the night.
  • 1857    -    Charles Dickens reads from A Christmas Carol at St. Martin's Hall in London–his first public reading.
  • 1859    -    Jean Francois Gravelet aka Emile Blondin, a French daredevil, becomes the first man to walk across Niagra Falls on a tightrope.
  • 1908    -    A mysterious explosion, possibly the result of a meteorite, levels thousands of trees in the Tunguska region of Siberia with a force approaching twenty megatons.
  • 1934    -    Adolf Hitler orders the purge of his own party in the "Night of the Long Knives."
ADVERTISEMENTS
  • 1936    -    Margaret Mitchell's novel, Gone With the Wind, is published.
  • 1948    -    John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley demonstrate their invention, the transistor, for the first time.
  • 1960    -    Alfred Hitchcock's film, Psycho, opens.
  • 1971    -    Three Soviet cosmonauts die when their spacecreaft depressurizes during reentry.

  • 30 June Birthdays

  • 1685    -    John Gay, poet and playwright (The Beggar's Opera).
  • 1768    -    Elizabeth Kortright, later Elizabeth Monroe, first lady to U.S. President James Monroe.
ADVERTISEMENTS
  • 1911    -    Czeslaw Milosz, Polish poet and critic.
  • 1917    -    Lena Horne, American singer.
  • 1919    -    Susan Hayward, actress.
  • 1926    -    Paul Berg, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist.
  • 1932    -    Mongo Beti, novelist and political writer.