Friday, April 30th
The 120th day of 2010.
There are 245 days left in the year.
Go to a previous date.
Go to lesson
Today's Highlights in History
Buy a Reproduction
NYT Front Page
See a larger version of this front page.
On April 30, 1975, the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to Communist forces. (Go to article.)
On April 30, 1902, Theodore Schultz, the American economist who won a Nobel Prize for his important studies of the human factor in the workplace, was born. Following his death on February 26, 1998, his obituary appeared in The Times. (Go to obit. | Other Birthdays)
Editorial Cartoon of the Day
On April 30, 1859, Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon about a U.S. military expedition to Paraguay. (See the cartoon and read an explanation.)
On this date in:
1789 George Washington took office in New York as the first president of the United States.
1803 The United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France.
1812 Louisiana became the 18th state.
1859 The novel "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens was first published in serial form in a literary magazine.
1900 Hawaii was organized as a U.S. territory.
1900 Train engineer John Luther "Casey" Jones of the Illinois Central Railroad died in a wreck near Vaughan, Miss., after staying at the controls in an effort to save the passengers. (The event was immortalized in song.)
1939 The New York World's Fair opened.
1945 Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler committed suicide along with his wife of one day, Eva Braun, as Russian troops approached his Berlin bunker.
1970 President Richard Nixon announced the United States was sending troops into Cambodia.
1993 Top-ranked women's tennis player Monica Seles was stabbed in the back by a man who ran onto the court during a match in Hamburg, Germany.
1997 ABC aired the "coming out" episode of the sitcom "Ellen," in which the title character, played by Ellen DeGeneres, admitted she is a lesbian.
2001 Chandra Levy, a federal government intern, went missing in Washington, D.C. (Her remains were found more than a year later in a city park.)
2003 Mahmoud Abbas took office as the first Palestinian prime minister. International mediators presented Israeli and Palestinian leaders with a "road map" to peace.
2003 The U.S. Navy withdrew from its disputed Vieques bombing range in Puerto Rico.
2005 Missing Georgia woman Jennifer Wilbanks, the so-called "runaway bride," turned up in Albuquerque, N.M.
2009 Chrysler filed for bankruptcy protection; the federal government pledged up to $8 billion in additional aid and to back warranties.
2009 British forces exited Iraq, handing control of the oil-rich Basra area to U.S. commanders.
Current Birthdays
Dianna Agron turns 24 years old today.
AP Photo/Dan Steinberg Actress Dianna Agron ("Glee") turns 24 years old today.
84 Cloris Leachman
Actress ("The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Phyllis")
77 Willie Nelson
Country singer
72 Gary Collins
Talk show host
70 Burt Young
Actor
67 Bobby Vee
Singer
66 Jill Clayburgh
Actress
57 Merrill Osmond
Singer (The Osmonds)
56 Jane Campion
Director ("The Piano")
51 Stephen Harper
Prime minister of Canada
49 Isiah Thomas
Basketball Hall of Famer
45 Adrian Pasdar
Actor ("Heroes")
35 Johnny Galecki
Actor ("The Big Bang Theory")
28 Kirsten Dunst
Actress
Historic Birthdays
Theodore Schultz
4/30/1902 - 2/26/1998
American economist, Nobel Prize 1979
(Go to obit.)
68 St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle
4/30/1651 - 4/7/1719
French philanthropist and founder of the Brothers of the Christian Schools
87 David Thompson
4/30/1770 - 2/10/1857
English explorer and fur trader in western Canada and the United States
82 Eugen Bleuler
4/30/1857 - 7/15/1939
Swiss psychiatrist; pioneered study of schizophrenics
86 John Crowe Ransom
4/30/1888 - 7/4/1974
American poet and critic
53 Joachim von Ribbentrop
4/30/1893 - 10/16/1946
German foreign minister under the Nazi regime (1933-45)
84 Simon Kuznets
4/30/1901 - 7/8/1985
Russian-born American Nobel Prize-winning economist and statistician
82 Eve Arden
4/30/1908 - 11/12/1990
American radio and television actress
82 Vermont Royster
4/30/1914 - 7/22/1996
American journalist and editor of The Wall Street Journal
83 Robert Shaw
4/30/1916 - 1/25/1999
American choral and orchestra conductor
78 Franz Lehar
4/30/1870 - 10/24/1948
Hungarian composer; wrote "The Merry Widow"
Go to a previous date.
SOURCE: The Associated Press
Front Page Image Provided by UMI
Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
Children's Privacy Notice