1930 General Historical Events

General Historical Events

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January

January 6

*The first diesel engine automobile trip was completed (Indianapolis, Indiana, to New York City) by Clessie Cummins, founder of the Cummins Motor Company.

*An early literary character licensing agreement was signed by A. A. Milne, granting Stephen Slesinger United States and Canadian merchandising rights to the Winnie-the-Pooh works.

January 13 

*The Mickey Mouse comic strip made its first appearance.

January 15 

*The Moon moves into its nearest point to Earth, called perigee, at the same time as its fullest phase of the Lunar Cycle. This was the closest moon distance at 356,397 kilometers (221,454 miles) in recorded history and the next perigee would not occur until January 1, 2257 at 356,371 kilometers (221,438 miles).

January 21

*A London Naval Conference convened.  It would end three months later with a treaty signed by Great Britain, the United States, France, Italy and Japan who agreed to limit submarine tonnage and gun-caliber and scrap certain warships.  Japanese militarist factions attacked the treaty.

January 26

 *The Indian National Congress declared declares this date as Independence Day or as the day for Poorna Swaraj (Complete Independence).

January 28

 *The first patent for a field-effect transistor was granted in the United States to Julius Edgar Lilienfeld. 

January 30 

*Pavel Molchanov launched a radiosonde from Pavlovsk in the Soviet Union. 

January 31  

*The 3M company marketed Scotch Tape, invented by Richard Gurley Drew, in the United States.

February

February 2

 *The Communist Party of Vietnam was established.

February 10

 *The Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang launched the Yen Bai mutiny in the hope of ending French colonial rule in Vietnam.  

February 18

*While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh confirmed the existence of Pluto, a celestial body considered a planet until redefined as a dwarf planet in 2006. 

*Elm Farm Ollie became the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft, and also the first cow to be milked in an aeroplane.

March

March 2

 *Mahatma Gandhi informed the British viceroy of India that civil disobedience would begin the following week.

March 5 

*Danish painter Einar Wegener began sex reassignment surgery in Germany and took the name Lili Elbe.

March 6 

*The first frozen foods of Clarence Birdseye went on sale in Springfield, Massachusetts.  

March 8

*A United States and League of Nations commission reported that Liberia still had slavery.

March 12

 *Mahatma Gandhi set off on a 200-mile protest march towards the sea with 78 followers to protest the British monopoly on salt.  More would join them during the Salt March that ended on April 5.

A civil disobedience campaign against the British in India began.  The All-India Trade Congress empowered Mahatma Gandhi to begin the demonstrations.  Called Mahatma (meaning "great soul" or "sage") for the previous decade, Gandhi led a 165 mile march to the Gujurat Coast of the Arabian Sea and produced salt by evaporation of seawater in violation of the law as a gesture of defiance against the British monopoly in salt production.

March 16

*The former Spanish dictator Primo de Rivera died at the age of 59.  Students agitated for a Spanish Republic, denouncing the monarchy of Alfonso XIII.

March 28

*Turkey's President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk renamed Constantinople, Istanbul, and Angora, Ankara. The government of Turkey requested that the international community adopt Istanbul and Ankara as the official names for Constantinople and Angora. 

Constantinople was a name for the great city, but it was a name which the Turks detested. 

Istanbul was the common name for the city in normal speech in Turkish even since before the Ottoman conquest of 1453, but in official use by the Ottoman authorities, other names such as Constantinople were preferred in certain contexts. 

After the creation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the various alternative names besides Istanbul became obsolete in the Turkish language. With the Turkish Postal Service Law of March 28, 1930, the Turkish authorities officially requested foreigners to cease referring to the city with their traditional non-Turkish names (such as Constantinople, Tsarigrad, etc.) and to adopt Istanbul as the sole name also in their own languages. Letters or packages sent to "Constantinople" instead of "Istanbul" were no longer delivered by Turkey's PTT, which contributed to the eventual worldwide adoption of the new name.

March 29

 *Heinrich Bruning was appointed Chancellor of Germany. 

March 31

 *The Motion Picture Production Code ("Hays Code") was instituted in the United States, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence on films for the next 40 years.

April

April 2

*Zanditu, the Empress of Ethiopia, died after a troubled reign of fourteen years.

April 4 

*The Communist Party of Panama was founded.

April 5

 *In an act of civil disobedience, Mahatma Gandhi broke the Salt laws of British India by making salt by the sea at the end of the Salt March.  

April 6

*The International Left Opposition (ILO) was founded in Paris, France.

*Hostess Twinkies were invented.

April 17 

*Neoprene was invented by DuPont.

April 18

*The Chittagong Rebellion began in India with the Chittagong armory raid.

*BBC Radio from London reported on this day that "There is no news".

April 19 

*Warner Bros. in the United States released their first cartoon series called Looney Tunes which ran until 1969.

April 21

*A fire in the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio, killed 320 people.

*The Turkestan-Siberia Railway was completed.

April 22

 *The United Kingdom, Japan and the United States signed the London Naval Treaty to regulate submarine warfare and limit naval shipbuilding.

April 28

 *The first night game in organized baseball history took place in Independence, Kansas.  

April 30

*France enacted a workmen's insurance law.

May

May 5 

*Mahatma Gandhi was re-arrested.

May 6

 *The 1930 Salmas earthquake in Iran killed up to 3,000 people.

*Japan capitulated to Chinese boycotts of Japanese goods by signing a tariff agreement with China.

May 10 

*The National Pan-Hellenic Council was founded in Washington, D. C.  

May 15

 *Nurse Ellen Church became  the world's first flight attendant, working on a Boeing Air Transport tri-motor.  

May 16

 *Rafael Leonidas Trujillo was elected president of the Dominican Republic.  

May 17

 *French Prime Minister Andre Tardieu decided to withdraw the remaining French troops from the Rhineland (they departed by June 30).

May 19

*South Africa's white women received the vote.  However, blacks of both sexes remained disenfranchised.

May 24

*Italy's Mussolini argued that the Treaty of Versailles should be reviewed and revised.

 *Amy Johnson landed in Darwin, Australia, becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia (she left on May 5 for the 11,000 mile flight).

May 30

*Sergei Eisenstein arrived in Hollywood to work for Paramount Pictures.  They would part ways by October.

*Canadian adventurer William "Red" Hill, Sr., made a five-hour journey down the Niagara Gorge rapids.

June

June 7

 *Carl Gustaf Ekman became the Prime Minister of Sweden for the second and final time.

June 8

*Romania's boy king Michael was removed after a three year reign and was succeeded by his father, now 37, who returned from exile on June 6 and who would reign until 1940 as Carol II.  The new king electrified the country by arriving from Paris by airplane and was soon joined by his mistress Magda Lupeseu, 26, who would have great influence.

June 9 

*Chicago Tribune journalist Jake Lingle was shot in Chicago, Illinois. Newspapers promised a $55,000 reward for information. Lingle was later found to have had contacts with organized crime. 

June 14

 *The Bureau of Narcotics was established under the United States Department of the Treasury, replacing the Narcotics Division of the Prohibition Unit.

June 17

 *President of the United States Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law.

June 21

 *The one-year conscription came into force in France.

June 30

*The last remaining Allied troops of occupation departed from the Rhineland five years ahead of the date set by the Treaty of Versailles and, as history would soon show, prematurely.

July

*Chinese Communists joined forces to attack Hankow.

July 4 

*The dedication of George Washington's sculpted head was held at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. 

July 5

 *The Seventh Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops opened. This conference approved the use of birth control in limited circumstances, a move away from the Christian views on contraception expressed by the Sixth Conference a decade earlier

July 7

*The Lapua Movement marched in Helsinki, Finland.

*The building of the Boulder Dam (later known as the Hoover Dam) was started on the Colorado River in the United States.

July 11

 *Australian cricketer Donald Bradman scored a world record 309 runs in one day, on his way to the highest individual Test innings of 334, during a Test match against England. 

July 13

 *The first FIFA World Cup started.  Lucien Laurent scored the first goal, for France against Mexico. 

July 19

 *Georges Simenon's detective character Inspector Jules Maigret made his first appearance in print under Simenon's own name when the novel Pietr-le-Letton (known in English as The Strange Case of Peter the Lett) began serialization in a French weekly magazine. Simenon would eventually write 75 novels (as well as 28 short stories) featuring the pipe-smoking Paris detective.

July 21 

*The United States Department of Veterans Affairs was established.

July 25

 *Laurence Olivier married actress Jill Esmond. 

July 26 

*Charles Creighton and James Hargis of Missouri began their return journey to Los Angeles using only a reverse gear; the 11,555 kilometer (7180 mile) trip lasted 42 days.

July 28

 *R. B. Bennett defeated William Lyon Mackenzie King in federal elections and became the Prime Minister of Canada. 

July 29

 *The British airship R100 set out for a successful 78-hour passage to Canada.

July 30

*Uruguay beat Argentina 4–2 to win the first Association football (soccer) FIFA World Cup final. 

*New York station W2XBS was put in charge of NBC broadcast engineers. 

July 31

*The radio drama The Shadow aired for the first time in the United States.

August

August 6

 *Judge Joseph Force Crater disappeared. 

August 7 

*R. B. Bennett took office as the eleventh Prime Minister of Canada.  

*Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were lynched in Marion, Indiana.  There were hanged.  James Cameron survived. This would be the last recorded lynching of African Americans in the Northern United States. 

August 9

 *Betty Boop premiered in the animated film Dizzy Dishes.

August 12

*Turkish and Russian forces launched an offensive against Kurdish rebels.

August 16

 *The first British Empire Games opened in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.  

August 21

 *Princess Margaret Rose was born in Glamis Castle in Scotland, younger daughter of Prince Albert, Duke of York (second son of King George V and Queen Mary, and later King George VI) and Elizabeth, Duchess of York, and sister to The Princess Elizabeth. 

August 25

*Augusto Leguia, President of Peru, resigned and fled the country after holding office for eleven (11) years.  He was driven out by a military insurrection led by Colonel Luis Cerro, who would be elected President in 1931.

August 27

 *A military junta took over in Peru. 

September

September 3

 *A huge hurricane in the Caribbean demolished most of the city of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. 

September 5

*There was a military coup in Argentina.

September 6 

*Jose Felix Uriburu carried out a military coup, overthrowing Hipolito Yrigoyen, President of Argentina. 

September 12

 *England cricketer Wilfred Rhodes ended his 1,110-game first-class career by taking 5 for 95 for H. D. G. Leveson Gower's XI against the Australians. 

September 14 

*In the German Reichstag elections, the Nazi Party won almost 6.5 million votes (up from 800,000 in 1928), compared with the 8.4 million garnered by the Socialists.  The Nazis won 107 seats, up from 12 in the old Reichstag.   However, Adolf Hitler was barred from taking his seat because of his Austrian citizenship.

September 20

 *The Eastern Catholic Rite Syro-Malankara Catholic Church was formed. 

September 27

 *Ismet Inonu formed a new government in Turkey (6th government).

October

 *The Indochinese Communist Party was formed. 

*A revolution in Brazil was led by Getulio Dornelles Vargas, the Provincial Governor of Rio Grande do Sul.

October 3

*The German Socialist Labor Party in Poland - Left was founded following a split in DSAP in Lodz. 

October 5

 *British airship R101 crashed in France en route to India on its maiden long-range flight resulting in the loss of 48 lives.

October 13

*Nazi deputies showed up in uniform violating the rules and creating an uproar.

October 20

 *A British White Paper demanded restrictions on Jewish immigration into Mandatory Palestine.

The Passfield Paper on Palestine suggested that a halt in Jewish immigration to Palestine was warranted so long as unemployment persisted among the Arabs.  Sidney James Webb, the first baron of Passfield, was the British secretary for colonies.

October 24

 *The Brazilian Revolution of 1930 occurred.  Getulio Vargas established a dictatorship.  

October 26

*Getulio Vargas accepted the Presidency of Brazil and would serve as President of Brazil until 1945.

October 27

 *Ratifications were exchanged in London on the first London Naval Treaty signed in April modifying the Washington Naval Treaty of 1925. Its arms limitation provisions went into effect immediately, hence putting more limits on the expensive naval arms race between its five signatories (the United Kingdom, the United States, the Japanese Empire, France, and Italy).

October 30

*Washington Luis Pereira de Souza, the former President of Brazil, was forced to resign. 

November

November 1

*Getulio Vargas dissolved the Brazilian Congress.  He would rule as Dictator.

November 2

 *Haile Selassie was crowned emperor of Ethiopia. 

Ras Tafari, who took the name Haile Selassie when he was proclaimed Negus (King) in June 1928, was crowned King of Kings at Addis Adaba.  He would reign until 1974 and be regarded by Jamaican Rastafarians as the living God.  He was seen as fulfilling a prophecy of Marcus Garvey, "Look to Africa, where a black king shall be crowned, for the day of deliverance is near."

November 3

 *Getulio Vargas became president of Brazil.

November 5

*Nationalist troops launched an encirclement campaign in parts of Hunan, Hubei, and Jianzi provinces.

November 14

*Japan's Prime Minister Yuko Hamaguchi was shot be a right wing militant and would die in six months.  Hamaguchi had supported acceptance of the London Naval Conference treaty.  (See January 21 above.)

November 25

An earthquake in the Izu Peninsula of Japan killed 223 people and destroyed 650 buildings.

Cecil George Paine, a pathologist at the Sheffied Royal Infirmary in England, achieves the first recorded cure (of an eye infection) using penicillin.  

December

December

 *All adult Turkish women were given the right to vote in elections.

December 2

 *Great Depression: President Herbert Hoover went before the United States Congress to ask for a $150 million public works program to help create jobs and to stimulate the American economy.

December 7

*The television station W1XAV in Boston broadcasts video and audio from the radio orchestra program The Fox Trappers. This broadcast also included the first television commercial in the United States, an advertisement for the I. J. Fox Furriers company which sponsored the telecast.

December 12

*The last allied troops left the Saar.

December 19 

*Mount Merapi volcano in central Java, Indonesia, erupted destroying numerous villages and killing thirteen hundred people.

December 24

*In London, inventor Harry Grindell Matthews demonstrated his device to project pictures on clouds.

December 29

*Muhammad Iqbal's presidential address in Allahabad introduced the two-nation theory, outlining a vision for the creation of Pakistan. 

December 31 

 *The Papal encyclical Casti connubii issued by Pope Pius XI stressed the sanctity of marriage, prohibited Roman Catholics from using any form of artificial birth control, and reaffirmed the Catholic prohibition on abortion. 

Date unknown

*A "Jake paralysis" outbreak occurred in the United States resulting from adulterated Jamaica ginger sold as an alcohol substitute during Prohibition.  

*Bernhard Schmidt invented the Schmidt camera.  

*The chocolate chip cookies was invented by Ruth Wakefield of the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts.  

*The experimental television station, W9XAP, in Chicago, broadcasted the election for the United States Senate, the first time that a senatorial race, with continual tallies of the votes, was televised.

*Greater Sudbury was incorporated as a city in northern Ontario. 

*The world's population reached close to 2 billion with much of it in the grip of an economic depression.

*Emigration from the United States for the first time in history exceeded immigration.

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