On This Day

[Altobelli]

30 OCTOBER

1340 Battle of Rio Salado Battle (or Tarifa): King Afonso IV of Portugal and King Alfonso XI of Castile defeat Sultan Abu al-Hasan 'Ali of Morocco and Yusuf I of Granada, last Marīnids invasion of Iberian Peninsula

1470 Henry VI returned to the English throne after the Earl of Warwick (known as Warwick the Kingmaker) defeated the Yorkists in battle.

1485 The coronation of Henry VII of England. He founded the Yeoman of the Guard - 'Beefeaters' - to guard Royal Palaces in London.

1534 English Parliament passes Act of Supremacy, making King Henry VIII head of the Church in England - a role formerly held by the Pope

1580 English explorer Sir Francis Drake completed his circumnavigation of the world when his ship, the 'Golden Hind', arrived back at Plymouth on the south coast of England.

1899 Battle of Ladysmith, Natal: Boers defeat the British, leading to the Siege of Ladysmith

1905 "October Manifesto" Russian Tsar Nicholas II grants civil liberties and accepts the first Duma (Parliament)

1917 British government gives final approval to Balfour Declaration

1922 Benito Mussolini is made Prime Minister of Italy.

1925 In his workshop in London, Scotsman John Logie Baird achieved the transmission of the first television pictures using the head of a dummy as his image source.. He then persuaded a 15 year old office boy, William Taynton, to sit in front of a camera, becoming the first live person captured on camera.

1935 The birth of Michael Winner, former film director, producer, and food critic for the Sunday Times until his death in 2013. An active proponent of law enforcement issues he established the Police Memorial Trust after WPC Yvonne Fletcher was murdered in 1984.

1938 Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, causing anxiety in some of the audience in the United States

1941 World War II: Franklin Delano Roosevelt approves U.S. $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations

1942 Three British Royal Navy personel - Lt. Tony Fasson, Able Seaman Colin Grazier and canteen assistant Tommy Brown from HMS Petard boarded the sinking German submarine U-559, and retrieved ***** instruments and documentation which would later lead the Bletchley Park codebreakers to crack the German Enigma code. Brown was the only one of the three to survive when the submarine sank. All three received the George Cross Medal and Tommy Brown (aged 16 and too young to be at sea at the time ) is the youngest person to have ever received that award.

1944 Anne and Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they die the following year, shortly before the end of WWII

1957 The Government revealed details of plans to reform the House of Lords, which included creating the first women life peerages.

1960 English surgeon Michael Woodruff performed Britain's first successful kidney transplant, at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

1961 Because of "violations of Vladimir Lenin's precepts", it is decreed that Joseph Stalin's body be removed from its place of honour inside Lenin's tomb

1965 English model Jean Shrimpton wore a miniskirt to the first day of the Melbourne Cup Carnival in Australia. The event became a milestone in the advancement of the mini as the defining fashion of the 1960s.

1973 The Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus for the first time

1974 The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali KOs George Foreman in the 8th round in Kinshasa, Zaire

1974 As a member of the California Angels, Major League Baseball player Nolan Ryan throws the fastest recorded pitch, at 100.9 miles per hour

1979 Barnes Wallis, British aeronautical engineer and inventor of the wartime dam busting 'bouncing bomb' died. The pilots of 617 squadron used Derwent Reservoir in Derbyshire to practice their low level flying. There is a memorial to them at Derwent Dam.

1984 The 3 surviving members of the 'Beatles' Pop group were given the freedom of the City of Liverpool. Harrison refused to attend.

1990 English and French tunnellers met for the first time underneath the English Channel during the construction of the Channel Tunnel.

1995 At Winchester Crown Court, Rosemary West, the wife of serial killer Frederick West, broke her 20 month silence to plead her innocence over her husband's murders.

2001 Farmer Tony Martin, the loner who shot dead a teenage burglar, was cleared of murder but told he must spend at least another year in jail.

Famous Birthday's

Christopher Columbus
(1451 - 1506)

John Adams
(1735 - 1826)

Ezra Pound
(1885 - 1972)

Fyodor Dostoevsky
(1821 - 1881)

Michael Winner
(1935 - 2013)

Otis Williams
76th Birthday

Henry Winkler
72nd Birthday

Diego Maradona
57th Birthday

Courtney Walsh
55th Birthday

Ivanka Trump
36th Birthday

Ashley Barnes
28th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Charles Tupper
(1821 - 1915)

Bonar Law
(1858 - 1923)

Steve Allen
(1921 - 2000)

William Cavendish-Bentinck
(1738 - 1809)

Sir Barnes Wallis
(1887 - 1979)

Famous Weddings

1943 Italian director Federico Fellini marries actress Giulietta Masina

1991 Singer Clint Black (34) weds actress Lisa Hartman (29)

2004 Blink-182 pop punk band drummer Travis Barker (28) weds actress and First Runner Up Miss USA 1995 Shanna Moakler (29) at the Bacara Resort & Spa in Santa Barbara, California

2012 Actress Evan Rachel Wood (25) weds "Billy Elliott" actor Jamie Bell (26) in California