This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
January 30 is the 30th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 335 days remaining until the end of the year (336 in leap years).
On this day in 1969, The Beatles’ last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records in London. The impromptu concert is broken up by the police.
A din erupted in the sky above London’s staid garment district. Gray-suited businessmen, their expressions ranging from amused curiosity to disgust, gathered alongside miniskirted teenagers to stare up at the roof of the Georgian building at 3 Savile Row. As camera crews swirled around, whispered conjecture solidified into confirmed fact: The Beatles, who hadn’t performed live since August 1966, were playing an unannounced concert on their office roof. Crowds gathered on scaffolding, behind windows, and on neighboring rooftops to watch the four men who had revolutionized pop culture play again. But what only the pessimistic among them could have guessed-what the Beatles themselves could not yet even decide for sure-was that this was to be their last public performance ever. . . . . .
When the world beyond London’s garment district finally got to see the Beatles’ last concert, it was with the knowledge, unshared by the original, live audience, that it was the band’s swan song. On Abbey Road Paul had sung grandly about “the end,” but it was John’s closing words on the roof that made the more fitting epitaph for the group that had struggled out of working-class Liverpool to rewrite pop history: “I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition.”
1048 – Protestantism: The villagers around today’s Baden-Baden elect their own priest in defiance of the local bishop. Later, in a move that would not be seen before the Protestant Reformation, he is also elected Pope by acclamatio, just to die that same day. It is rumored that Ildebrando di Soana heard of the acclamatio and used it later to get elected himself as Pope Gregory VII.
1648 – Eighty Years’ War: The Treaty of Münster and Osnabrück is signed, ending the conflict between the Netherlands and Spain.
1649 – King Charles I of England is beheaded.
1661 – Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England is ritually executed two years after his death, on the anniversary of the execution of the monarch he himself deposed.
1667 – The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth cedes Kiev, Smolensk, and left-bank Ukraine to the Tsardom of Russia in the Treaty of Andrusovo.
1703 – The Forty-seven Ronin, under the command of Oishi Kuranosuke, avenge the death of their master.
1790 – The first boat specializing as a lifeboat is tested on the River Tyne.
1806 – The original Lower Trenton Bridge (also called the Trenton Makes the World Takes Bridge), which spans the Delaware River between Morrisville, Pennsylvania and Trenton, New Jersey, is opened.
1820 – Edward Bransfield sights the Trinity Peninsula and claims the discovery of Antarctica.
1826 – The Menai Suspension Bridge, considered the world’s first modern suspension bridge, connecting the Isle of Anglesey to the north West coast of Wales, is opened.
1835 – In the first assassination attempt against a President of the United States, Richard Lawrence attempts to shoot president Andrew Jackson, but fails and is subdued by a crowd, including several congressmen.
1841 – A fire destroys two-thirds of Mayaguez, Puerto Rico.
1847 – Yerba Buena, California is renamed San Francisco.
1858 – The first Halle concert is given in Manchester, England, marking the official founding of the Halle Orchestra as a full-time, professional orchestra.
1862 – The first American ironclad warship, the USS Monitor is launched.
1889 – Archduke Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown, is found dead with his mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera in Mayerling.
1902 – The first Anglo-Japanese Alliance was signed in London.
1911 – The destroyer USS Terry (DD-25) makes the first airplane rescue at sea saving the life of James McCurdy 10 miles from Havana, Cuba.
1911 – The Canadian Naval Service becomes the Royal Canadian Navy.
1913 – The United Kingdom’s House of Lords rejects the Irish Home Rule Bill.
1925 – The Government of Turkey throws Patriarch Constantine VI out of Istanbul.
1930 – The world’s second radiosonde is launched in Pavlovsk, USSR.
1933 – Adolf Hitler is sworn in as Chancellor of Germany.
1942 – World War II: Japanese forces invade the island of Ambon in the Dutch East Indies.
1943 – World War II: Second day of the Battle of Rennell Island. The USS Chicago (CA-29) is sunk and a U.S. destroyer is heavily damaged by Japanese torpedoes.
1944 – World War II: United States troops land on Majuro.
1945 – World War II: The Wilhelm Gustloff, overfilled with refugees, sinks in the Baltic Sea after being torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, leading to the deadliest known maritime disaster, killing approximately 9,000 people.
1945 – World War II: Raid at Cabanatuan: 126 American Rangers and Filipino resistance liberate 500 prisoners from the Cabanatuan POW camp.
1948 – Indian pacifist and leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is assassinated by Pandit Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist.
1956 – American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.’s home is bombed in retaliation for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
1959 – MS Hans Hedtoft, said to be the safest ship afloat and “unsinkable” like the RMS Titanic, struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage and sank, killing all 95 aboard.
1960 – The African National Party is founded in Chad, through the merger of traditionalist parties.
1964 – Ranger program: Ranger 6 is launched.
1964 – In a bloodless coup, General Nguyen Khanh overthrows General Duong Van Minh’s military junta in South Vietnam.
1969 – The Beatles’ last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records in London. The impromptu concert is broken up by the police.
1971 – Carole King’s Tapestry album is released, it would become the longest charting album by a female solo artist and sell 24 million copies worldwide.
1972 – Bloody Sunday: British Paratroopers kill fourteen unarmed civil rights/anti internment marchers in Northern Ireland.
1972 – Pakistan withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations.
1975 – The Monitor National Marine Sanctuary was established as the first United States National Marine Sanctuary.
1982 – Richard Skrenta writes the first PC virus code, which is 400 lines long and disguised as an Apple boot program called “Elk Cloner”.
1989 – The American embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan closes.
1994 – Peter Leko becomes the youngest chess grand master.
1995 – Workers from the National Institutes of Health announce the success of clinical trials testing the first preventive treatment for sickle-cell disease.
1996 – Gino Gallagher, the suspected leader of the Irish National Liberation Army, is killed while waiting in line for his unemployment benefit.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_30#Holidays_and_observances Holidays and observances
* Christian Feast Day:
o Anthony the Great (Coptic Church)
o Balthild
o King Charles the Martyr (Society of King Charles the Martyr, Anglicanism)
o Martina
o Savina
o Three Holy Hierarchs (Eastern Orthodox)
o January 30 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
* Martyrdom of Mahatma Gandhi-related observances:
o Martyrs’ Day (India)
o School Day of Non-violence and Peace (Spain)
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