October 30 is the 303rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 62 days remaining until the end of the year.
637 – Arab–Byzantine wars: Antioch surrenders to the Rashidun Caliphate after the Battle of the Iron Bridge.
758 – Guangzhou is sacked by Arab and Persian pirates.
1137 – Ranulf of Apulia defeats Roger II of Sicily at the Battle of Rignano, securing his position as duke until his death two years later.
1270 – The Eighth Crusade ends by an agreement between Charles I of Anjou (replacing his deceased brother King Louis IX of France) and the Hafsid dynasty of Tunis, Tunisia.
1340 – Reconquista: Portuguese and Castilian forces halt a Muslim invasion at the Battle of Río Salado.
1485 – King Henry VII of England is crowned, beginning the Tudor reign.
1657 – Anglo-Spanish War: Spanish forces fail to retake Jamaica at the Battle of Ocho Rios.
1806 – War of the Fourth Coalition: Convinced that he is facing a much larger force, Prussian General von Romberg, commanding 5,300 men, surrenders the city of Stettin to 800 French soldiers.
1817 – Simón Bolívar becomes President of the Third Republic of Venezuela.
1831 – Nat Turner is arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in United States history.
1863 – Danish Prince Vilhelm arrives in Athens to assume his throne as George I, King of the Hellenes.
1864 – The Treaty of Vienna is signed, by which Denmark relinquishes one province each to Prussia and Austria.
1888 – The Rudd Concession is granted by Matabeleland to agents of Cecil Rhodes.
1905 – Czar Nicholas II issues the October Manifesto, granting the Russian peoples basic civil liberties and the right to form a duma. (October 17 in the Julian calendar)
1918 – First World War: The Ottoman Empire signs the Armistice of Mudros with the Allies.
1920 – The Communist Party of Australia is founded in Sydney.
1925 – John Logie Baird creates Britain's first television transmitter.
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 – President Roosevelt approves $1 billion dollars in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations.
1941 – Holocaust: Fifteen hundred Jews from Pidhaytsi are sent by Nazis to Bełżec extermination camp.
1942 – Second World War: Lt. Tony Fasson and Able Seaman Colin Grazier drown while taking code books from the sinking German submarine U-559.
1944 – Holocaust: Anne and Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they die from disease the following year, shortly before the end of WWII.
1945 – Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signs a contract for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking the baseball color line.
1947 – The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is founded.
1953 – President Eisenhower approves the top-secret document NSC 162/2 concerning the maintenance of a strong nuclear deterrent force against the Soviet Union.
1956 – Hungarian Revolution: The government recognizes the new workers' councils. Army officer Béla Király leads an attack on the Communist Party headquarters.
1961 – The Soviet Union detonates the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful explosive device ever detonated.
1961 – Due to "violations of Vladimir Lenin's precepts", it is decreed that Joseph Stalin's body be removed from inside Lenin's tomb and buried nearby with a plain marker instead.
1973 – The Bosphorus Bridge in Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosphorus for the second time.
1974 – The Rumble in the Jungle boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman takes place in Zaire.
1975 – Prince Juan Carlos I of Spain becomes acting head of state, taking over for the country's ailing dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco.
1980 – El Salvador and Honduras agree to put the border dispute fought over in 1969's Football War before the International Court of Justice.
1983 – The first democratic elections in Argentina, after seven years of military rule, are held.
1985 – Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for mission STS-61-A, its final successful mission.
1993 – The Troubles: Loyalists carry out a mass shooting at a Halloween party in Greysteel, Northern Ireland, killing six Catholics and two Protestants.
1991 – The Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The Madrid Conference commences in an effort to revive peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine.[1]
1995 – Quebec citizens narrowly vote (50.58% to 49.42%) in favour of remaining a province of Canada in their second referendum on national sovereignty.
2005 – The rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II) is reconsecrated after a thirteen-year rebuilding project.
2014 – Sweden is the first European Union member state to officially recognize the State of Palestine.
2015 – Sixty-four people are killed and more than 147 injuries after a fire in a nightclub in the Romanian capital Bucharest.
