On Jan. 30, 1948, Indian political and spiritual leader Mohandas K. Gandhi was shot and killed by a Hindu extremist.
In 1649, England's King Charles I was beheaded.
In 1798, a brawl broke out in the House of Representatives in Philadelphia, as Matthew Lyon of Vermont spat in the face of Roger Griswold of Connecticut.
In 1835, a gunman fired twice on President Andrew Jackson, the first attempt on the life of a U.S. president. Jackson was not injured.
In 1882, the 32nd president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was born in Hyde Park, N.Y.
In 1883, James Ritty and John Birch received a U.S. patent for the first cash register.
In 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany.
In 1960, the American Football League awarded a franchise to Oakland, Calif.
In 1964, the United States launched Ranger 6, an unmanned spacecraft carrying television cameras that crash-landed on the moon, but failed to send back images.
In 1968, the Tet Offensive began during the Vietnam War as Communist forces launched surprise attacks against South Vietnamese provincial capitals.
In 1972, 13 Roman Catholic civil rights marchers were shot to death by British soldiers in Northern Ireland on what became known as "Bloody Sunday."
In 1991, Iraqi armored forces charged out of Kuwait and engaged allied forces in Khafji, Saudi Arabia. 12 U.S. Marines were killed in the heaviest ground fighting of the Gulf War.
In 1993, parents donated portions of their own lungs to their daughter with cystic fibrosis in pioneering transplant surgery in Los Angeles.
In 1995, 42 people were killed when a car bomb exploded in Algiers, Algeria. Also in 1995, the U.N. Security Council authorized deployment of 6,000 peacekeepers to Haiti.
In 1999, NATO ambassadors gave the organization authority to attack military targets in Serbia if Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic continued to violate the 1998 cease-fire negotiated with the rebels in Kosovo.
In 2000, Elian Gonzalez's grandmothers returned home to a hero's welcome in Cuba, vowing to continue the struggle to wrest the six-year-old shipwreck survivor from relatives in Miami. A Kenya Airways A-310 crashed shortly after takeoff from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, killing 169 people (10 people survived). The St. Louis Rams won Super Bowl XXXIV (34), defeating the Tennessee Titans 23-16.
In 2003, Richard Reid, the British citizen and al-Qaida follower who'd tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic jetliner with explosives hidden in his shoes in 2001, was sentenced to life in prison by a federal judge in Boston. Also in 2003, AOL Time Warner said it was writing down the value of AOL by $35 billion and of its cable division $10 billion, bringing a total loss of assets since the 2001 merger of AOL and Time Warner to nearly $100 billion.
In 2004, Cuban President Fidel Castro, in a militant five-hour speech in Havana, accused the Bush administration of plotting to kill him.
In 2005, Iraqis voted in their country's first free election in a half-century; President George W. Bush called the balloting a resounding success. The downing of a C-130 military transport plane north of Baghdad killed all ten British servicemen on board; the militant group Ansar al-Islam claimed responsibility. In Northern Ireland, Robert McCartney, 33, was killed in a fight at a Belfast pub by members of the Irish Republican Army. Marat Safin defeated Lleyton Hewitt 1-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 to win the Australian Open.
In 2007, Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system went on sale.
In 2008, the U.S. Federal Reserve cut short-term interest rates by one half of a percentage point in an effort to help the sagging economy while the U.S. Senate sought passage of the $161 billion economic stimulus package. Also in 2008, Egypt reported it had foiled a suicide attack on Israel by arresting five Palestinians alleged carrying rifles and explosives.
In 2009, Michael Steele was elected the first black chairman of the Republican National Committee. President Barack Obama signed a series of executive orders that he said should "level the playing field" for labor unions in their struggles with management. Unemployment remained up and the stock market down in the first reports of 2010. U.S. stock exchanges reported their weakest January in more than a century with the Dow Jones industrial average showing a one-month decline of 8.8 percent, closing at 8,000.86. The January unemployment picture jumped to 7.6 percent. Ingemar Johansson, who stunned the boxing world by knocking out Floyd Patterson to win the heavyweight title in 1959, died in Kungsbacka, Sweden at age 76. Former Alabama Gov. Guy Hunt died in Birmingham at age 75.
Today's Birthdays: Actress Dorothy Malone is 85. Producer-director Harold Prince is 82. Actor Gene Hackman is 80. Actress Tammy Grimes is 76. Actress Vanessa Redgrave is 73. Chess grandmaster Boris Spassky is 73. Country singer Jeanne Pruett is 73. Country singer Norma Jean is 72. Former Vice President Dick Cheney (CHAY'-nee) is 69. Rock singer Marty Balin is 68. Rhythm-and-blues musician William King (The Commodores) is 61. Singer Phil Collins is 59. Actor Charles S. Dutton is 59. World Golf Hall of Famer Curtis Strange is 55. Maine Gov. John Baldacci is 55. Actress-comedian Brett Butler is 52. Singer Jody Watley is 51. The King of Jordan, Abdullah II, is 48. Actor Norbert Leo Butz is 43. Country singer Tammy Cochran is 38. Actor Christian Bale is 36. Pop-country singer-songwriter Josh Kelley is 30. Actor Wilmer Valderrama is 30. Actor Jake Thomas is 20.
Those Born On This Date Include: Historian Barbara Tuchman (1912); comedian Dick Martin (1922).
Today In Entertainment History:
In 1933, the first episode of the "Lone Ranger" radio program was broadcast on station WXYZ in Detroit.
In 1956, Elvis Presley recorded a version of Carl Perkins' "Blue Suede Shoes," in New York.
In 1969, the Beatles performed as a group for the last time in public in a 45-minute gig on the roof of their Apple Records headquarters in London during the filming of "Let it Be."
In 1973, Kiss performed their first show, in New York.
In 1989, singer Randy Travis won three American Music Awards, including one for favorite male country artist.
In 1990, Bob Dylan was named Commander in France's Order of Arts and Letters by the country's culture ministry.
In 1996, 21 people were injured at an overcrowded concert for the group Immature in Atlanta when the crowd surged toward the stage.
Thought for Today: "History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness." — Will (1885-1981) and Ariel Durant (1898-1981), American historians.
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