This Day in History – January 30
Today is the 30th day of 2012. 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 Events
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.
1986: President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines pledges to relinquish power peacefully if he loses to Corazon Aquino in the February 7 election.
1990: Communist Party loses majority in Czech parliament, which it dominated for four decades.
1992: US military announces it will halt or cut back operations at 83 additional military sites in Europe.
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.
2007: The UN’s first women-only peacekeeping contingent — made up of about 100 Indian policewomen — arrives in Liberia to join the UN’s 15,000-strong peacekeeping force in the West African country.
2008: The Australian government says it will issue its first formal apology to its indigenous people on February 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.
2010: China suspends military exchanges with the United States, threatens unprecedented sanctions against American defence companies and warns that cooperation would suffer after Washington announced $6.4 billion in planned arms sales to Taiwan.
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-).
— AP
