March 30

1822 – Congress creates the Florida Territory.

1842 – Ether is used as an general anesthetic in a surgical operation for the first time, by Dr. Crawford Long in Jefferson, Georgia.

1867 – Alaska is purchased from Russia for $7.2 million by Secretary of State William H. Seward.

1870 – Texas is readmitted to the United States Congress following Reconstruction.
The 15th amendment’s ratification to the Constitution is formally certified.

1900 – Archaeologists in Knossos, Crete, discover the first clay tablet with hieroglyphic writing in a script later called Linear B, the earliest form known of ancient Greek.

1959 – Due to the Tibetan Uprising against communist Chinese oppression;  Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, fearing arrest at the Chinese National People’s Congress, escapes Tibet and flees to India.

1961 – The international treaty to control illicit trade in drugs, the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is signed in New York City.

1965 –  A car bomb driven by the Viet Cong explodes in front of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, killing 2 Americans, 1 Filipino U.S. civil servant, 19 Vietnamese and wounding 183 others.

1967 – Delta Air Lines Flight 9877, a Douglas DC-8 on a training flight, crashes at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, killing all 6 crew aboard and 13 more people on the ground.

1981 – President Ronald Reagan and 3 others are wounded by gunfire outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington D.C., hotel by John Hinckley, Jr.

2017 – SpaceX conducts the world’s first reflight of an orbital class rocket the Falcon 9.

2021 – G. Gordon Liddy, chief operative in the Watergate scandal dies, age 90, at his daughter’s house in Fairfax County, Virginia due to complications of Parkinson’s disease.