30 December In History | Worksheets for Kids

1460 – The Duke of York is defeated at the Battle of Wakefield during the War of the Roses.
1803 – The Stars and Stripes flag was raised over New Orleans as the United States took formal possession of the territory of Louisiana, an area of 885,000 square miles, nearly doubling the size of the U.S. The territory had been purchased from France for approximately $15 million.
1862 – During the American Civil War, the Union ironclad ship USS Monitor sank off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, during a storm, resulting in the loss of sixteen crewmen.
1903 – In Chicago, a fire inside the Iroquois Theater killed 588 persons, eventually resulting in new fire safety codes for theaters.
1922 – The USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) was established through the confederation of Russia, Byelorussia, Ukraine and the Transcaucasian Federation.

1924 – Astronomer Edwin Hubble announces the existence of other galaxies.
1947 – King Michael of Romania was forced to abdicate after the Communists seized power.
1953 – The first color television set goes on sale
1981 – Wayne Gretzky sets an NHL record by scoring 50 goals in 39 games.
1988 – President Ronald Reagan and President-elect George Bush were subpoenaed to testify in the trial of Oliver North, a former White House aide implicated in the Iran-Contra affair in which arms were secretly sold to Iran while profits from the sale were diverted to guerrillas trying to topple the Nicaraguan government in South America.
1993 – Israel and the Vatican signed an agreement on mutual recognition, seeking to end 2,000 years of unfriendly Christian-Jewish relations.
1995 – Lowest temperature ever recored in the UK. Altnaharra, a small hamlet in northern Scotland, recorded a temperature of −27.2°C (-16.96 degrees Fahrenheit). The temperature had dipped this low once before in the UK – in Braemar, East Scotland on January 10, 1982
2004 – Highest barometric pressure recorded. At 2 am local time, the atmospheric pressure in Tosontsengel, Mongolia rose to 846.5 hPa (adjusted for height above sea level).

2006 – Saddam Hussein executed. The deposed president of Iraq was hanged after he was found guilty of crimes against humanity. Hussein was the fifth president of Iraq and came to power after a coup in 1968.
2011 – Samoa and Tokelau skipped December 30. The South Pacific Ocean Islands changed their time zone and move west of the international dateline to align their time zone with their major trading partners, Australia and New Zealand. In doing so, they skipped December 30 and moved directly from December 29 to December 31. 119 years ago, Samoa had made a similar shift, eastwards of the dateline, to synchronize its time with the United States. Today, Samoa follows West Samoa Time, which is 13 hours ahead of UTC.

1853 – André Messager (French composer)
1865 – Rudyard Kipling (Author)
1884 – Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo (1884-1948) was born in Tokyo. He led Japan during World War II and was arrested in August 1945 as a war criminal, tried, then hanged in 1948.
1935 – Sandy Koufax (Baseball player)
1945 – Davy Jones (Singer for the Monkeys)

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