Today is Saturday, January 30, the 30th day of 2010. There are 335 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight

1948: Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated by a Hindu nationalist in New Delhi, India.

Other Notable Events

1648: Peace between Spain and the Netherlands is signed at Muenster.

1649: England’s King Charles I is beheaded.

1781: The Articles of the US Confederation are adopted by Maryland, the last of the original 13 colonies to do so.

1835: Demented painter Richard Lawrence tries to assassinate US President Andrew Jackson.

1902: Britain signs treaty with Japan providing for independence of China and Korea.

1933: Adolf Hitler is named chancellor of Germany.

1957: United Nations calls on South Africa to reconsider its apartheid policy.

1972: Thirteen Roman Catholic civil rights marchers are shot to death by British soldiers in Northern Ireland on what becomes known as “Bloody Sunday.”

1979 : White Rhodesians approve new constitution to eventually give blacks control of the nation, now known as Zimbabwe; the civilian government of Iran announces it has decided to allow Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was living in exile in France, to return.

1999: NATO authorises its secretary-general to launch military action against Yugoslavia if it does not negotiate an agreement for autonomy in Kosovo.

2000 : In Berlin, Germany, hundreds of neo:Nazis demonstrate at the site of a planned memorial to Holocaust victims and march through the Brandenburg Gate where Nazi troops once held processions.

2002 : The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland agrees to pay US$10 million to children sexually abused by clergy over the past few decades.

2004: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announces that UN staffers can receive benefits for their gay or lesbian partners if their country recognises same-sex marriages or domestic partnerships.

2005: Iraqis in 14 countries stream into polling stations for their last chance to cast absentee ballots in Iraq’s first independent election in five decades, expressing hopes that the vote will bring peace and stability to their homeland.

2008: The Australian government says it will issue its first formal apology to its indigenous people on Feb 13, a milestone that could ease tensions with a minority whose mixed-blood children were once taken away on the premise that their race was doomed.

Today’s Birthdays:

Franklin D Roosevelt, US president (1882-1945); Gene Hackman, US actor (1930–); Vanessa Redgrave, English actress (1937–); Phil Collins, English pop singer (1951–); Brett Butler, US actress/comedian (1958–); Christian Bale, English actor (1974–); Jody Watley, US singer (1959–).