March 30

From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.

[edit] Births

• 1945 - Eric Clapton
• 1968 - Céline Dion
• 1970 - Secretariat

[edit] Deaths

• 1486 - Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury
• 1783 - William Hunter, anatomist (b. 1718)
• 1840 - Beau Brummell, English celebrity and dandy (b. 1778)
• 1842 - Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, painter (b. 1755)
• 1879 - Thomas Couture, French painter and teacher (b. 1815)
• 1912 - Karl May, German author (b. 1842)
• 1947 - Arthur Machen, author (b. 1863)
• 1949 - Friedrich Bergius, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1884)
• 1966 - Maxfield Parrish, American artist (b. 1870)
• 1968 - Bobby Driscoll, American actor
• 1977 - Sergey Ilyushin, Russian aerospace engineer (b. 1894)
• 1981 - DeWitt Wallace, American publisher
• 1984 - Karl Rahner, German theologian
• 1985 - Harold Peary, American actor, singer
• 1986 - James Cagney, actor (b. 1899)
• 1997 - Jon Stone, American writer, director, producer, co-creator of Sesame Street
• 1999 - Gary Morton, film and television producer
• 2002 - Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Queen Mother of the United Kingdom (b. 1900)
• 2003 - Rudolf Walter Leonhardt, German journalist
• 2003 - Valentin Pavlov, former prime minister of the Soviet Union
• 2003 - Michael Jeter, American actor
• 2004 - Alistair Cooke, broadcaster
• 2004 - Michael King, New Zealand historian
• 2004 - Erick Friedman, American concert violinist, violin professor at Yale University
• 2004 - Hubert Gregg, BBC broadcaster
• 2004 - Timi Yuro, American singer
• 2005 - Mitch Hedberg, comedian
• 2005 - Robert Creeley, poet, died of complications from respiratory disease.
• 2005 - Milton Green, former record holder in hurdles, boycotted the 1936 Olympics as a protest against Hitler.
• 2005 - Fred Korematsu, Japanese-American civil rights leader, respiratory illness
• 2005 - Ootupulackal Velukkuty Vijayan, Indian author and cartoonist

[edit] Events

• 1296 - Edward I storms Berwick-upon-Tweed, sacking the then-Scottish border town, slaughtering almost everyone, even those fleeing to the churches.
• 1282 - The people of Sicily rebel against the Angevin king Charles I, in what becomes known as the Sicilian Vespers.
• 1492 - Ferdinand and Isabella sign a decree aimed at expelling all Jews from Spain unless they convert to Roman Catholicism.
• 1533 - Thomas Cranmer becomes Archbishop of Canterbury.
• 1814 - Napoleonic Wars: Sixth Coalition forces march into Paris.
• 1822 - Florida Territory created in the United States.
• 1842 - Anesthesia is used for the first time in an operation by Dr. Crawford Long.
• 1844 - One of the most important battles of the Dominican War of Independence from Haiti takes place near the city of Santiago de los Caballeros.
• 1855 - Origins of the American Civil War: Bleeding Kansas - "Border Ruffians" from Missouri invade Kansas and force election of a pro-slavery legislature.
• 1856 - The Treaty of Paris (1856) is signed, ending the Crimean War.
• 1858 - Hyman Lipman patents a pencil with an attached eraser.
• 1863 - Prince Wilhelm Georg of Sleeswÿk-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg is chosen as King George I of Greece.
• 1867 - Alaska is purchased for $7.2 million, about 2 cent/acre ($4.19/km²), by United States Secretary of State William H. Seward. The news media call this Seward's Folly.
• 1870 - Texas is readmitted to the Union following Reconstruction.
• 1912 - Sultan Abdelhafid signs the Treaty of Fez, making Morocco a French protectorate.
• 1940 - Sino-Japanese War: Japan declares Nanking to be the capital of a new Chinese puppet government, nominally controlled by Wang Ching-wei.
• 1945 - World War II: Soviet Union forces invade Austria and take Vienna; Alger Hiss congratulated in Moscow for his part in bringing about the Western betrayal at the Yalta Conference.
• 1951 - Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.
• 1954 - The first subway in Canada opens after five years of construction, in Toronto.
• 1961 - The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is signed at New York.
• 1962 - Jack Paar hosts his last episode of The Tonight Show.
• 1964 - The game show Jeopardy! debuts on television.
• 1965 - Vietnam War: A car bomb explodes in front of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, killing 22 and wounding 183 others.
• 1972 - Vietnam War: The Eastertide Offensive begins after North Vietnamese forces cross into the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) of South Vietnam.
• 1974 - The Ramones play their first ever gig as a trio at CBGB's in New York City.
• 1981 - President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C. hotel by John Hinckley, Jr., family friend of the Vice President.
• 1987 - One of Vincent Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" paintings is bought by Japanese insurance magnate Yasuo Goto for $39.85 million.