30 January 1606-Four conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot are executed for treason. 1649 - King Charles I is executed by the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. 1660-The body of Oliver Cromwell, former Lord Protector of England, is exhumed and ritually executed on the anniversary of his execution of King Charles I. 1835 - President Andrew Jackson survives the first ever assassination attempt on a U.S. president. 1862-USS Monitor, the first ironclad warship for the U.S. Navy, is launched. 1889 - Crown Prince Franz Karl Josef Rudolf and his mistress Marie Vetsera commit suicide at the imperial hunting lodge of Mayerling, Austria. This leaves Emperor Franz Josef without an heir, forcing him to choose his nephew, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to succeed him. 1902 - Britain and Japan sign a treaty providing for the independence of China and Korea. 1913-House of Lords rejects the Irish Home Rule Bill; if bill is read twice more in the Commons during the life of the current government, it will become law without the approval of the Lords, under the provisions of the 1911 Parliamentary Reform Act, which diminished the veto power of the Lords. 1933 - German President Paul von Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler chancellor. 1937 - Thirteen leading Communists are sentenced to death for allegedly participating in a plot, led by Leon Trotsky, to overthrow the Soviet regime and assassinate its leaders. 1937-Reichschancellor Hitler informs the Reichstag that Germany is withdrawing its signature from the Versailles Treaty. 1943-Admiarl Karl Doenitz is appointed CinC of the German Navy, replacing Grand Admiral Erich Raeder. 1943 - The Royal Air Force executes the first daylight bombing raid on Berlin. 1945 - The Duke of Gloucester becomes Australias first royal governor-general. 1948 - Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the Indian nationalist movement against British rule, is assassinated by a Hindu extremist. 1964 - A coup detat is executed in South Vietnam led by General Nguyen Khanh, displacing General Duong Van Minh. Minh led the coup on 1 November, 1963, that overthrew and murdered President Ngo Dinh Diem. 1967 - Pope Paul VI meets Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny, the first Soviet head of state to visit the Vatican. 1968-Code phrase “crack the sky, shake the earth” is transmitted by Hanoi to all Vietcong and regular North Vietnamese forces, signalling the start of the Tet Offensive. The offensive is to be begin in full force on the next day, but some VC cadres launch premature attacks on Ban Me Thuot, Pleiku, and other provincial capital cities. A general alert is flashed to all U.S. and ARVN commands; however no general sense of urgency about the attacks is transmitted. 1968 - Clark Clifford is confirmed by a unanimous Senate vote as Secretary of Defense; his Tuesday lunch with President Johnson is interrupted by the first reports of the Tet offensive. As Vietnam is 12 hours ahead of Washington, D.C., early afternoon in the nation’s capital is shortly after midnight in Saigon. 1972 - British soldiers shoot dead 13 people in a banned Catholic civil rights march in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in a clash known as Bloody Sunday. 1972 - Pakistan leaves the Commonwealth in protest against imminent recognition of Bangladesh by Britain, Australia and New Zealand. 1973 - In the United States, Gordon Liddy and James McCord are convicted of burglary, wiretapping and attempted bugging of the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate building. 1979-The new Iranian government announces that it will allow the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini to return to Iran from exile in France. 1979 - In a referendum, white Rhodesians vote by a majority of 85 per cent in favor of a new constitution aimed at black majority rule.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 10:50:43 +0000