History of the Day for:
January 30
- 1649: King Charles I was beheaded in London for treason.
- 1790: The first purpose-built lifeboat, The Original, was launched on the River Tyne in England.
- 1815: The United States purchased Thomas Jefferson's library as the nucleus of the Library of Congress.
- 1835: President Andrew Jackson survived the first ever assassination attempt on a U.S. president.
- 1862: The U.S. Navy's first ironclad warship, the Monitor, was launched.
- 1882: Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd president of the United States (1933-45), was born.
- 1931: Charlie Chaplin's "City Lights" premiered at the Los Angeles Theater.
- 1933: German President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor; "The Lone Ranger" began its 21-year run on radio.
- 1937: Thirteen leading Communists were sentenced to death for participating in a plot, allegedly led by Leon Trotsky, to overthrow the Soviet regime and assassinate its leaders.
- 1939: Adolf Hitler called for the extermination of European Jews.
- 1943: World War II: Second day of the Battle of Rennell Island. The USS Chicago (CA-29) is sunk and a U.S. destroyer is heavily damaged by Japanese torpedoes.
- 1944: World War II: United States troops land on Majuro.
- 1945: World War II: The Wilhelm Gustloff, overfilled with refugees, sinks in the Baltic Sea after being torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, leading to the deadliest known maritime disaster, killing approximately 9,000 people.
- 1945: World War II: Raid at Cabanatuan: 126 American Rangers and Filipino resistance liberate 500 prisoners from the Cabanatuan POW camp.
- 1945: World War II: Hitler gives his last ever public address, a radio address on the 12th anniversary of his coming to power. (A subsequent address on February 24 was not read by Hitler.)
- 1948: Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Ghandi, who had led his nation to independence from British rule through his philosophy of nonviolent confrontation, was murdered by a Hindu extremist in New Delhi, India; the fifth Winter Olympic games opened in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
- 1961: Bobby Darin became the youngest performer to headline a television special on NBC.
- 1962: Two members of the Flying Wallendas' high-wire act were killed when their seven-person pyramid collapsed during a performance in Detroit.
- 1968: Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese soldiers launched the Tet (New Year) offensive, targeting more than 100 towns and cities in South Vietnam. In Saigon, they invaded the grounds of the U.S. Embassy.
- 1972: British soldiers shot dead 13 people in a banned Catholic civil rights march in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in a clash known as "Bloody Sunday."
- 1973: G. Gordon Liddy and James McCord were convicted of burglary, wire-tapping and attempted bugging of the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate building; KISS played their first show, at the Coventry Club in Queens, N.Y.
- 1976: George H. W. Bush becomes the 11th director of the CIA.
- 1979: Varig 707-323C freighter, flown by the same commander as Flight 820, disappears over the Pacific Ocean 30 minutes after taking off from Tokyo.
- 1982: Richard Skrenta writes the first PC virus code, which is 400 lines long and disguised as an Apple boot program called "Elk Cloner".
- 1989: The American embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan closes.
- 1994: Péter Lékó becomes the youngest chess grand master.
- 1995: Workers from the National Institutes of Health announce the success of clinical trials testing the first preventive treatment for sickle-cell disease.
- 1996: Gino Gallagher, the suspected leader of the Irish National Liberation Army, is killed while waiting in line for his unemployment benefit.
- 1996: Comet Hyakutake is discovered by Japanese amateur astronomer Yuji Hyakutake.
- 2000: Off the coast of Ivory Coast, Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 169.
- 2003: Belgium becomes the second country in the world to legally recognise same-sex marriage.