Today is Jan. 30. On this date:
1649
England’s King Charles I was executed for treason.
1815
The U.S. House of Representatives joined the Senate in agreeing to purchase the personal book collection of former President Thomas Jefferson to replace volumes lost when the British burned the U.S. Capitol and its congressional library during the War of 1812.
1882
The 32nd president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was born in Hyde Park, New York.
1911
James White, an intellectually disabled black man who’d been convicted of rape for having sex with a 14-year-old white girl when he was 16, was publicly hanged in Bell County, Kentucky.
1931
Charlie Chaplin’s film “City Lights” premiered in Los Angeles.
1933
Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany.
1933
The first episode of the “Lone Ranger” radio program was broadcast on station WXYZ in Detroit.
1945
During World War II, more than 500 Allied captives held at the Japanese prison camp in Cabanatuan in the Philippines were liberated by U.S. Army Rangers, Alamo Scouts and Filipino guerrilla fighters. Adolf Hitler marked the 12th anniversary of his appointment as Germany’s chancellor with his last public speech in which he called on Germans to keep resisting until victory.
1945
During World War II, a Soviet submarine torpedoed the German ship MV Wilhelm Gustloff in the Baltic Sea with the loss of more than 9,000 lives, most of them war refugees; roughly 1,000 people survived.
1948
Indian political and spiritual leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, 78, was shot and killed in New Delhi by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist. (Godse and a co-conspirator were later executed.)
1948
Aviation pioneer Orville Wright , 76, died in Dayton, Ohio.
1962
Two members of “The Flying Wallendas” high-wire act were killed when their seven-person pyramid collapsed during a performance at the State Fair Coliseum in Detroit.
1968
The Tet Offensive began during the Vietnam War as Communist forces launched surprise attacks against South Vietnamese towns and cities; although the Communists were beaten back, the offensive was seen as a major setback for the U.S. and its allies.
1969
The Beatles staged an impromptu concert atop Apple Corps headquarters in London; it was the group’s last public performance.
1972
British soldiers in Northern Ireland shot to death 13 Roman Catholic civil rights marchers on what became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
1973
The rock group KISS performed its first show at a club in Queens, N.Y.
1981
An estimated 2 million New Yorkers turned out for a ticker-tape parade honoring the American hostages freed from Iran.
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