On This Day: March 30 (original) (raw)
Updated March 30, 2014, 8:54 am
On March 30, 1981, President Reagan was shot and seriously injured outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John W. Hinckley Jr. Also wounded were White House news secretary James Brady, a Secret Service agent and a District of Columbia police officer.
On March 30, 1880, Sean O'Casey, the noted Irish playwright, was born. Following his death on Sept. 18, 1964, his obituary appeared in The Times.
Go to obituary » | Other birthdays »
| 1822 | Florida became a U.S. territory. |
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| 1867 | Secretary of State William H. Seward reached agreement with Russia to purchase Alaska for $7.2 million, a deal roundly ridiculed as "Seward's Folly." |
| 1870 | The 15th amendment to the Constitution, giving black men the right to vote, was declared in effect. |
| 1870 | Texas was readmitted to the Union. |
| 1945 | The Soviet Union invaded Austria during World War II. |
| 1964 | The TV game show "Jeopardy!" premiered on NBC. |
| 1995 | Pope John Paul II issued an encyclical condemning abortion and euthanasia as crimes that no human laws could legitimize. |
| 1999 | A jury in Portland, Ore., ordered Philip Morris to pay $81 million to the family of a man who died of lung cancer after smoking Marlboros for four decades. |
| 2002 | Britain's Queen Mother Elizabeth died at age 101. |
| 2006 | American reporter Jill Carroll, a freelancer for The Christian Science Monitor, was released after 82 days as a hostage in Iraq. |
| 2009 | President Barack Obama asserted unprecedented government control over the auto industry, rejecting GM and Chrysler's restructuring plans and engineering the ouster of GM's chief executive, Rick Wagoner.. |
Historic Birthdays
Sean O'Casey 3/30/1880 - 9/18/1964 Irish playwright; contributed to Irish Literary Renaissance.Go to obituary »
| 69 | Moses Maimonides 3/30/1135 - 12/13/1204 Spanish-born Jewish philosopher, jurist and physician |
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| 82 | Francisco de Goya 3/30/1746 - 4/16/1828 Spanish painter; depicted political tyranny in his works |
| 83 | Juan Manuel de Rosas 3/30/1793 - 3/14/1877 Argentine military and political leader and governor of Buenos Aires (1835-52) |
| 58 | Anna Sewell 3/30/1820 - 4/25/1878 English author ("Black Beauty") |
| 76 | Charles Booth 3/30/1840 - 11/23/1916 English shipowner and sociologist |
| 37 | Vincent van Gogh 3/30/1853 - 7/29/1890 Dutch Post-Impressionist painter |
| 78 | Melanie Klein 3/30/1882 - 9/22/1960 Austrian-born English psychoanalyst |
| 79 | Arthur Herrington 3/30/1891 - 9/6/1970 American engineer and manufacturer; developed the World War II jeep |
| 77 | McGeorge Bundy 3/30/1919 - 9/16/1996 American educator and presidential advisor on foreign policy |