January 30th
Today in America's Present Past
1615 | Thomas Rolfe, son of Pocahontas was born.
1797 | Civil Rights: Congress rejects the first petition from an African-American.
1797 | General Edwin Vose Sumner was born.
1798 | Congress: Over an argument on the floor of the U.S. House, one Congressman spits in the face of another.
1815| Congress: The British burnt Library of Congress is rebuilt with Thomas Jefferson’s 6,500 volumes.
1835 | POTUS: Democratic President Andrew Jackson survives the first assignation attempt on a U.S. President when Richard Lawrence’s pistol misfires.
1835 | Inventor and General Oliver Edwards was born.
1836 | Seamstress Betsy Ross died.
1838 | Seminole leader Osceola died.
1844 | Scholar and diplomat Richard T. Greener was born.
1847 | The village of Yerba Buena is renamed San Francisco.
1858 | Civil Rights: The first African-American authored drama is published (“Leap to Freedom”).
1862 | Civil War: The Union Navy launches the U.S.S. Monitor.
1882 | POTUS: Franklin D. Roosevelt was born.
1885 | Admiral John Henry Towers was born.
1888 | Botanist Asa Gray died.
1894 | Charles King patents the pneumatic hammer in Detroit, Michigan.
1909 | Author Saul David Alinsky was born.
1909 | Author Martha Finley died.
1910 | Inventor Granville Woods died.
1912 | Author Barbara Tuchman was born.
1912 | Religious leader Francis Schaeffer was born.
1922 | Comedian Dick Martin was born.
1925 | Computer scientist Douglas Engelbart was born.
1930 | Actor Gene Hackman was born.
1931 | Charlie Chaplin’s silent film “City Lights” debuted.
1931 | Author Allan W. Eckert was born.
1934 | Publisher Frank Nelson Doubleday died.
1934 | Actor Lou Costello weds Anne Battler.
1935 | Poet Richard Brautigan was born.
1939 | SCOTUS: Justice Felix Frankfurter is sworn in.
1941 | Vice-President Dick Cheney was born.
1944 | WWII: The Battle of Cisterna, Italy begins.
1944 | WWII: U.S. troops begin the liberation of the Marshall Islands.
1945 | WWII: U.S. rangers liberate 500 POWs from a Japanese prison camp at Cabanatuan.
1946 | U.S. Mint releases the Roosevelt dime.
1948 | Aviator Orville Wright died.
1949 | Biologist Peter Agre was born.
1956 | Civil Rights: The home of Martin Luther King, Jr. is bombed.
1957 | Congress: Approves the “Eisenhower Doctrine,” providing appropriations for Arab nations who resist communist aggression.
1958 | First U.S. 2-way moving sidewalk goes into service, Dallas, Texas.
1968 | Vietnam: Viet Cong launches the Tet Offensive.
1972 | Congress: Speaker Mike Johnson was born.
1973 | POTUS: A jury finds Liddy and McCord guilty in the “Watergate” break-in.
1990 | U.S. concludes invasion of Panama.
1991 | Physicist John Bardeen died.
2006 | Activist Coretta Scott King died.
2007 | Author Sidney Sheldon died.
2017 | Engineer Harold Rosen died.