July 30

762 – Baghdad is founded on the ruins of the city of Babylon by the Abbasid Caliphate.

1502 – Christopher Columbus lands at Guanaja in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras during his fourth voyage.

1619 – In Jamestown, Virginia, the first Colonial European representative assembly in the Americas, the Virginia General Assembly, convenes for the first time.

1676 – Nathaniel Bacon issues the “Declaration of the People of Virginia”, beginning Bacon’s Rebellion against the rule of Governor William Berkeley.

1718 – William Penn, the founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, dies at his home in Ruscombe, England.

1729 – Baltimore, Maryland is founded

1863 – Representatives of the United States and tribal leaders, including Shoshone Chief Pocatello, sign the Treaty of Box Elder, compensating the tribe for their land claim at a rate of about 50¢ per acre.

1864 – Union forces attempt to break Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia by exploding a large bomb under their trenches.

1865 – The steamboat Brother Jonathan sinks off the coast of Crescent City, California, with the loss of 225 passengers.

1871 – While docked at the South Ferry slip on Manhattan island, the steam boiler of the Staten Island Ferry Westfield explodes, killing 126 people aboard, and on land and injuring hundreds more.

1881 – Marine General Smedley Butler, the last servicemember to be twice awarded the Medal of Honor is born in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

1945 – On the way to the Philippines after delivering the components for the Little Boy nuclear bomb, the USS Indianapolis is torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-58, killing 883 crewmen. Most die during the following four days afloat in the ocean, until an aircraft notices the survivors.

1956 – A joint resolution of the U.S. Congress is signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorizing In God We Trust as the U.S. national motto.

1965 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid.

1971 – The Apollo 15 Lunar Module Falcon, piloted by David Scott and James Irwin, lands on the Moon near Hadley Rille with the first Lunar Rover aboard,  for a 3 day visit.

1974 – President Nixon releases subpoenaed White House recordings after being ordered to do so by the Supreme Court.

1975 – Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, never to be seen again.

2003 – In Mexico, the last ‘old style’ Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line.

2020 – NASA’s Mars 2020 mission is launched on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral with the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter aboard.

2022 – Nichelle Nichols, Uhura of Star Trek fame, dies of heart failure in Silver City, New Mexico, age 89.