May 30

70 – During the Roman empire’s siege of Jerusalem, Titus and his legions breach the Second Wall of Jerusalem. Jewish defenders retreat to the First Wall.

1431 – In Rouen, France, Joan of Arc is burned at the stake as a heretic by an English dominated tribunal.

1539 – Hernando de Soto lands at Tampa Bay with 600 soldiers with the goal of finding gold.

1806 – Future President Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in a duel over personal insults.

1854 – The Kansas-Nebraska Act, establishing the US territories of Kansas and Nebraska and repealing the Missouri Compromise, is signed into law by President Franklin Pierce.

1868 – Decoration Day, the predecessor of the modern Memorial Day, is observed in the U.S. for the first time after a proclamation by John A. Logan, head of the veterans group, The Grand Army of the Republic.

1883 – A stampede on the recently opened Brooklyn Bridge in New York kills twelve people.

1899 – Pearl Hart, a female outlaw of the Old West, commits one of the last stage coach robberies, about 30 miles southeast of Globe, Arizona.

1911 –Ray Harroun driving the Marmon Wasp wins the first Indianapolis 500 motor race, at a blistering average speed of 74.602 miles per hour.

1922 – The Lincoln Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. by former President and then Chief Justice of the United States, William H. Taft.

1943 – Dr. Josef Mengele becomes chief medical officer of the Zigeunerfamilienlager -Romani family camp- at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

1948 – A dike along the Columbia River breaks during a flood, obliterating Vanport, Oregon and killing 15 people.

1958 – The remains of two unidentified American servicemen, killed in action during World War II and the Korean War, are buried along side the Unknown Soldier of World War 1 at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

1971 – The Mariner 9 probe is launched from Cape Canaveral on a mission to map the surface, and to study changes in the atmosphere and surface of Mars.

1972 – In Ben Gurion Airport (at the time, Lod Airport), Israel, 3 members of the Japanese Red Army attack and kill 26 people and injure 78 others before 2 are killed and the last wounded and arrested.

1979 – Downeast Flight 46,  a de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter, crashes on approach to Knox County Regional Airport in Rockland, Maine, killing 17 of the 18 passengers and crew aboard.

2020 – The SpaceX Crew Demo-2  Endeavour, the first crewed orbital spacecraft to launch from the United States since 2011, with astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken aboard, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center.