30 October History
- 1270 - The Seventh Crusade ends by the Treaty of Barbary.
- 1485 - Henry VII of England crowned.
- 1697 - The Treaty of Ryswick ends the war between France and the Grand Alliance.
- 1838 - Oberlin Collegiate Institute in Lorian County, Ohio becomes the first college in the U.S. to admit female students.
- 1899 - Two battalions of British troops are cut off, surrounded and forced to surrender to General Petrus Joubert's Boers at Nicholson's Nek.
- 1905 - The czar of Russia issues the October Manisfesto, granting civil liberties and elections in an attempt to avert the burgeonng supprot for revolution.
- 1918 - The Italians capture Vittorio Veneto and rout the Austro-Hungarian army.
- 1918 - Turkey signs an armistice with the Allies, agreeing to end hostilities at noon, October 31.
- 1922 - Mussolini sends his black shirts into Rome. The Fascist takeover is almost without bloodshed. The next day, Mussolini is made prime minister. Mussolini centralized all power in himself as leader of the Fascist party and attempted to create an Italian empire, ultimately in alliance with Hitler's Germany.
- 1925 - Scotsman John L. Baird performs first TV broadcast of moving objects.
- 1938 - H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds is broadcast over the radio by Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. Many panic believing it is an actual newscast about a Martian invasion.
- 1941 - The U.S. destroyer Reuben James, on convoy duty off Iceland, is sunk by a German U-boat with the loss of 96 Americans.
- 1950 - The First Marine Division is ordered to replace the entire South Korean I Corps at the Chosin Reservoir area.
- 1991 - BET Holdings Inc., becomes the first African-American company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
30 October Birthdays
- 1735 - John Adams, second president of the United States who helped draft the Declaration of Independence and the Treaty of Paris, ending the American Revolution.
- 1751 - Richard Sheridan, playwright (The Rivals, The School for Scandal).
- 1839 - Alfred Sisley, landscape painter.
- 1857 - Gertrude Atherton, novelist.
- 1871 - Paul Valery, poet and essayist.
- 1882 - William F. "Bull" Halsey, Jr., American admiral who played an instrumental role in the defeat of Japan during World War II. The Japanese surrender was signed on his flagship, the USS Missouri.
- 1885 - Ezra Pound, American poet who promoted Imagism, a poetic movement stressing free phrase rather than forced metric. He was imprisoned for his pro-Fascist radio broadcasts.