July 30 in History

Marcus Antonius (14 January 83 BC – 1 August 30 BC), commonly known in English as Mark Antony, was a Roman politician and general who played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic from a constitutional republic into the autocratic Roman Empire. Antony was a relative and supporter of Julius Caesar, and he served as one of his generals during the conquest of Gaul and Caesar's civil war. Antony was appointed administrator of Italy while Caesar eliminated political opponents in Greece, North Africa, and Spain. After Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, Antony joined forces with Lepidus, another of Caesar's generals, and Octavian, Caesar's great-nephew and adopted son, forming a three-man oligarchy known to historians as the Second Triumvirate. The Triumvirs defeated Caesar's killers, the Liberatores, at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, and divided the government of the Republic among themselves. Antony was assigned Rome's eastern provinces, including the client kingdom of Egypt, then ruled by Cleopatra VII, and was given the command in Rome's war against Parthia. Relations among the triumvirs were strained as the various members sought greater political power. Civil war between Antony and Octavian was averted in 40 BC, when Antony married Octavian's sister, Octavia. Despite this marriage, Antony carried on a love affair with Cleopatra, who bore him three children, further straining Antony's relations with Octavian. Lepidus was expelled from the association in 36 BC, and in 33 BC, disagreements between Antony and Octavian caused a split between the remaining Triumvirs. Their ongoing hostility erupted into civil war in 31 BC, when Octavian induced the republic to declare war on Cleopatra and proclaim Antony a traitor. Later that year, Antony was defeated by Octavian's forces at the Battle of Actium. Antony and Cleopatra fled to Egypt, where, having again been defeated at the Battle of Alexandria, they died by suicide. With Antony dead, Octavian became the undisputed master of the Roman world. In 27 BC, Octavian was granted the honorific title of Augustus, marking the final stage in the transformation of the Republic into a monarchy, with himself as the first Roman emperor.

Pope Vitalian (Latin: Vitalianus; died 27 January 672) was the bishop of Rome from 30 July 657 to his death in 672. His pontificate was marked by the dispute between the papacy and the imperial government in Constantinople over Monothelitism, which Rome condemned. Vitalian tried to resolve the dispute and had a conciliatory relationship with Emperor Constans II, who visited him in Rome and gave him gifts. Vitalian's pontificate also saw the secession of the Archbishopric of Ravenna from the papal authority.

Baghdad is the capital and largest city in Iraq. It is located on the banks of the Tigris in central Iraq. The city has an estimated population of 8 million. It ranks among the most populous and largest cities in the Middle East and the Arab world and constitutes 22% of Iraq's population. Baghdad is a primary financial and commercial center in the region. Founded in 762 AD by al-Mansur on a site with settlement dating back to at least the Neo-Babylonian period, Baghdad became the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate and its most notable development project. The city evolved into an intellectual and cultural center. This, in addition to housing several key academic institutions, including the House of Wisdom, as well as a multi-ethnic and multi-religious environment, garnered it a worldwide reputation as the "Center of Learning". For much of the Abbasid era, during the Islamic Golden Age, Baghdad was one of the largest cities in the world and rivaled Chang'an, as the population peaked at more than one million. It was largely destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258, resulting in a decline that would linger for many centuries due to frequent plagues and shifts in power between multiple successive empires. Later, Baghdad served as the administrative center of Ottoman Iraq, exercising authority over the provinces of Basra, Mosul, and Shahrizor. During the First World War, Baghdad was made the capital of Mandatory Iraq. With the recognition of Iraq as an independent monarchy in 1932, it gradually regained some of its former prominence as a significant center of Arab culture. During the Ba'ath Party rule, the city experienced a period of relative prosperity and growth. However, it faced severe infrastructural damage due to the Iraq War, which began with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, resulting in a substantial loss of cultural heritage and historical artifacts. During the insurgency and renewed war from 2013 to 2017, it had one of the highest rates of terrorist attacks in the world. However, these attacks have gradually declined since the territorial defeat of the Islamic State militant group in Iraq in 2017, and are now rare. Since the end of the war, numerous reconstruction projects have been underway to induce stability. Iraq's largest city, Baghdad is the seat of government. It generates 40% of the economy of Iraq. A major center of Islamic history, Baghdad is home to numerous historic mosques, as well as churches, mandis and synagogues, highlighting the city's historical diversity. Religious sites such as Masjid al-Kadhimayn, Buratha Mosque, the Shrine of Abdul-Qadir Gilani and Abu Hanifa Mosque are visited by millions of people annually. It was once home to a large Jewish community and was regularly visited by Sikh pilgrims from India. Baghdad is a regional cultural hub. The city is well known for its coffeehouses.

The Defenestrations of Prague were three incidents in the history of Bohemia in which people were defenestrated. Though already existing in Middle French, the word defenestrate is believed to have first been used in English in reference to the episodes in Prague in 1618 when the disgruntled Protestant estates threw two royal governors and their secretary out of a window of the Hradčany Castle and wrote an extensive apologia explaining their action. In the Middle Ages and early modern times, defenestration was not uncommon—the act carried elements of lynching and mob violence in the form of murder committed together.

Between 1492 and 1504, the Italian explorer and navigator Christopher Columbus led four transatlantic maritime expeditions to the Americas in the name of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. These voyages led to Europeans learning about the New World and were an early breakthrough in the period known in Europe as the Age of Exploration, which saw the colonization of the Americas, a related biological exchange, and the beginning of trans-Atlantic trade. These events, the effects and consequences of which persist to the present, are often cited as the beginning of the modern era.

The Beaver Wars (Mohawk: Tsianì kayonkwere, pronounced [d͡ʒanî gajũgwere]), also known as the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars (French: Guerres franco-iroquoises), were a series of conflicts fought intermittently during the 17th century in North America throughout the Great Lakes region and the St. Lawrence River valley which pitted the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) – who were supported by the Dutch and later the English – against neighbouring Indigenous nations such as the Wendat (Huron), who were supported by the French. The Haudenosaunee were a confederacy of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations inhabiting the lands in what is now Upstate New York south of Lake Ontario and east to Lake Champlain, Lake George and the Hudson River. They initially mobilized against the Wendat and other Iroquoian-speaking peoples of the Great Lakes region and later moved against the French and their Algonquian allies. While the traditional view is that the Haudenosaunee sought to expand their territory in order to monopolize the fur trade with European markets, two other theories have gained acceptance: a need for the Haudenosaunee to replenish their population after suffering catastrophic epidemics in the 1630s, and a desire to impose the Great Law of Peace on other Iroquoian-speaking people. The Haudenosaunee were supplied with arms by their Dutch and English trading partners, while the Algonquians and Wendat were backed by the French, their chief trading partner. The Haudenosaunee became dominant in the region and enlarged their territory as a result of the wars, realigning the North American tribal geography south of the Great Lakes. They gained control of the Ohio River watershed as their hunting grounds from about 1670 onward. Both Algonquian and Iroquoian societies were greatly disrupted by these wars. Several confederacies and nations, including the Wendat, Erie, Neutral, Petun, Susquehannock, and Mahican, were defeated and dispersed. Survivors fled to neighbouring tribes or were forcibly adopted into the Haudenosaunee. A number of Algonquian nations were also directly attacked. The conflict abated when the Haudenosaunee lost their Dutch allies in New Netherland after the English seized the colony. The Haudenosaunee soon established a trading alliance with the English, and periodically fought against the French until the Great Peace of Montreal was signed in 1701. The brutal nature of Haudenosaunee warfare has led some scholars to classify the Beaver Wars as acts of genocide. Others disagree, suggesting that Haudenosaunee actions during the Beaver Wars "do not easily conform to definitions of genocide that suggest complete extermination."

The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. It was located, in what later became James City County, on the northeast bank of the James River, about 2.5 mi (4 km) southwest of present-day Williamsburg. It was established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 4, 1607 O.S. (May 14, 1607 N.S.). It followed earlier, failed English colonization attempts, including the 1585 Roanoke Colony. A river island was selected to evade Spanish naval patrols; however, it was infested with mosquitoes, lacked potable water, and was used by the Paspahegh people. Despite supply missions, only 60 of the original 214 settlers survived the 1609–1610 winter known as Starving Time. In 1612, West Indies tobacco was successfully cultivated, leading to an economic boom for the colony and England.

The Eighty Years' War or Dutch Revolt (c. 1566/1568–1648) was an armed conflict in the Habsburg Netherlands between disparate groups of rebels and the Spanish government. The causes of the war included the Reformation, centralisation, excessive taxation, and the rights and privileges of the Dutch nobility and cities. After the initial stages, Philip II of Spain, the sovereign of the Netherlands, deployed his armies and regained control over most of the rebel-held territories. However, widespread mutinies in the Spanish army caused a general uprising. Under the leadership of the exiled William the Silent, the Catholic and Protestant-dominated provinces sought to establish religious peace while jointly opposing the king's regime with the Pacification of Ghent, but the general rebellion failed to sustain itself. Despite steady military and diplomatic successes by the Governor of Spanish Netherlands and General for Spain, the Duke of Parma, the Union of Utrecht continued their resistance, proclaiming their independence through the 1581 Act of Abjuration and establishing the Calvinist-dominated Dutch Republic in 1588. In the Ten Years thereafter, the Republic (whose heartland was no longer threatened) made conquests in the north and east and received diplomatic recognition from France and England in 1596. The Dutch colonial empire emerged, which began with Dutch attacks on Portugal's overseas territories. Facing a stalemate, the two sides agreed to a Twelve Years' Truce in 1609; when it expired in 1621, fighting resumed as part of the broader Thirty Years' War. An end was reached in 1648 with the Peace of Münster when Spain retained the Southern Netherlands and recognised the Dutch Republic as an independent country.

The English Civil War or Great Rebellion was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Royalists and Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the struggle consisted of the First English Civil War and the Second English Civil War. The Anglo-Scottish war of 1650 to 1652 is sometimes referred to as the Third English Civil War.

The Battle of Warsaw (German: Schlacht von Warschau; Polish: Bitwa pod Warszawą; Swedish: Tredagarsslaget vid Warschau) took place near Warsaw on July 28–July 30 [O.S. July 18–20] 1656, between the armies of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden and Brandenburg. It was a major battle in the Second Northern War between Poland and Sweden in the period 1655–1660, also known as The Deluge. According to Hajo Holborn, it marked "the beginning of Prussian military history". In the battle, a smaller Swedish-Brandenburg force, but with the fire superiority of infantry and artillery, gained tactical victory over a Polish–Lithuanian force superior in numbers, though in the long term the victory achieved little. Polish–Lithuanian losses were insignificant, since the Polish-Lithuanian forces, including the sizeable noble levy, retreated in good order from the battlefield.

Nathaniel Bacon (January 3, 1647 – October 26, 1676) was an English merchant and adventurer who settled in the Virginia Colony, of the Thirteen Colonies where he sat on the Governor's Council. In early 1676 he led Bacon's Rebellion against the Virginia colonial government. The rebellion was briefly successful; but after Bacon’s death from dysentery in October 1676, the rebel forces collapsed.

Baltimore, also known as Baltimore City, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. It is the 30th-most populous U.S. city with a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 569,997 in 2025, while the Baltimore metropolitan area at 2.86 million residents is the 22nd-largest metropolitan area in the nation. The city is also part of the Washington–Baltimore combined statistical area, which had a population of 9.97 million in 2020. Baltimore was designated as an independent city by the Constitution of Maryland in 1851. Though not located under the jurisdiction of any county in the state, it forms part of the Central Maryland region together with the surrounding county that shares its name.

Freemasonry consists of fraternal groups that trace their origins to medieval guilds of stonemasons. Freemasonry is considered the oldest existing secular fraternal organisation, with documents and traditions dating back to the 14th century. One of the primary purposes of Freemasonry is charity.

Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd (Петроград), and later Leningrad (Ленинград), is the second-largest city in Russia, after Moscow, the nation's capital. Situated on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, its area of 1,439 square kilometers (556 sq mi) makes it the smallest administrative division of Russia by area. The city had a population of 5,601,911 residents as of 2021, with more than 6.4 million people living in the metropolitan area. Saint Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. As the former capital of the Russian Empire, and a historically strategic Baltic port, it is governed as a federal city.

Don Miguel Gregorio Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo y Costilla Gallaga Mandarte y Villaseñor (8 May 1753 – 30 July 1811), commonly known as Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla or simply Miguel Hidalgo (Spanish: [miˈɣel iˈðalɣo]), was a Mexican Catholic priest and prominent leader of the Mexican War of Independence, who is recognized as the Father of the Nation. A professor at the Colegio de San Nicolás Obispo in Valladolid, Hidalgo was influenced by Enlightenment ideas, which contributed to his ouster in 1792. He served in a church in Colima and then in Dolores. After his arrival, he was shocked by the rich soil he had found. He tried to help the poor by showing them how to grow olives and grapes, but in New Spain (modern Mexico) growing these crops was discouraged or prohibited by colonial authorities to prevent competition with imports from Spain. On 16 September 1810, he gave the Cry of Dolores, a speech calling upon the people to protect the interest of King Ferdinand VII, held captive as part of the Peninsular War, by revolting against the peninsulares who had overthrown Viceroy José de Iturrigaray. Hidalgo marched across Mexico and gathered an army of nearly 90,000 irregulars who attacked peninsular and criollo elites. Hidalgo's insurgent army accumulated initial victories on its way to Mexico City, but his troops ultimately lacked training and were poorly armed. These troops ran into an army of well-trained and armed Spanish troops in the Battle of Calderón Bridge and were defeated. After the battle, Hidalgo and his remaining troops fled north, but Hidalgo was betrayed, captured and executed.

The Grand Combin is a mountain massif in the western Pennine Alps in the canton of Valais. At a height of 4,309 metres (14,137 ft) the summit of Combin de Grafeneire is one of the highest peaks in the Alps and the second most prominent of the Pennine Alps. The Grand Combin is also a large glaciated massif consisting of several summits, among which three are above 4000 metres (Combin de Grafeneire 4,309 m (14,137 ft), Combin de Valsorey 4,184 m (13,727 ft), Combin de la Tsessette 4,132 m (13,556 ft)). The highest part of the massif is wholly in Switzerland, although the border with Italy lies a few kilometres south. The normal route starts from the Panossière Hut, which lies on the north side in the Corbassière valley. Despite the fact that no major difficulties exist, a particularly dangerous passage has to be traversed on the north flank: Le Corridor. It is a couloir dominated by seracs continuously falling on it.

The American Indian Wars, also known as the American Frontier Wars, and the Indian Wars, were initially fought by European colonial empires, the United States, and briefly the Confederate States of America and Republic of Texas against various American Indian tribes in North America. These conflicts occurred from the time of the earliest colonial settlements in the 17th century until the end of the 19th century. The various conflicts resulted from a wide variety of factors, the most common being the desire of settlers and governments for tribal lands. The European powers and their colonies enlisted allied Indian tribes to help them conduct warfare against each other's colonial settlements. After the American Revolution, many conflicts were local to specific states or regions and frequently involved disputes over land use; many involved retaliatory violence. As American settlement expanded westward after the American Revolution, conflicts between the United States and Native American nations increased in scale and frequency. A major turning point came during the War of 1812, when Native confederacies in the Old Northwest and the Southern United States allied with the British against the United States. Following the war, armed resistance continued in some regions, but relations between the United States and Native nations were increasingly governed through treaties that transferred large areas of Indigenous land to the United States. Historians have noted that the United States frequently failed to uphold treaty obligations, contributing to recurring disputes and further conflict. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized the president to negotiate treaties exchanging Native American lands east of the Mississippi River for lands in the west. Although the act itself provided for negotiated removals, federal and state authorities subsequently used a combination of treaties, political pressure, and coercion to relocate many Native nations from the southeastern United States to Indian Territory. The resulting removals, including the Trail of Tears, transferred millions of acres of Indigenous land to the United States and opened much of the Southeast to American settlement. As American settlement expanded across the Great Plains and the Western United States, the federal government increasingly confined Native peoples to Indian reservations through treaties, military campaigns, and congressional legislation. Native American tribes and confederacies often achieved significant military victories against American settlers and soldiers, but generally lacked the population, resources, and logistical capacity to sustain prolonged resistance against the expanding United States. Some scholars have characterized aspects of United States policies toward Native Americans, including forced removals, warfare, and reservation policies, as constituting genocide against Native Americans. Other scholars dispute the application of the term genocide to the American Indian Wars as a whole, arguing that the conflicts varied significantly across time and place.

The Valuev Circular (Russian: Валуевский циркуляр, romanized: Valuyevsky tsirkulyar; Ukrainian: Валуєвський циркуляр, romanized: Valuievskyi tsyrkuliar) of 18 (30) July 1863 was a decree (ukaz) issued by Pyotr Valuev (Valuyev), Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire, by which many publications (religious and educational literature recommended for the use in primary literacy training) in the "Little Russian" (Ukrainian) language were forbidden, except for belles-lettres works.

The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States. The South saw slavery as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans. Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, a Republican who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven slave states in the South responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy seized US forts and other federal assets in the South. The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina. A wave of enthusiasm for war swept over the North and South, as military recruitment soared. Four more Southern states seceded after the war began and, led by its president, Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy comprised eleven states, containing a third of the US population. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued. During 1861–1862 in the western theater, the Union made permanent gains, though in the eastern theater the conflict was inconclusive. The abolition of slavery became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free, applying to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country. To the west, the Union first destroyed the Confederacy's river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River, while Confederate general Robert E. Lee's incursion north failed at the Battle of Gettysburg. General Ulysses S. Grant's western successes led Lincoln to promote him to command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, followed by his March to the Sea, which culminated in his taking Savannah. The last significant battles raged around the ten-month siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Confederates abandoned Richmond, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant following the Battle of Appomattox Court House, setting in motion the end of the war. Lincoln lived to see this victory but was shot by an assassin on April 14, dying the next day. By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure had been destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to rebuild the country, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant civil rights to freed slaves. The war is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in the history of the United States. It remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of continuing interest is the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The war was among the first to use industrial warfare. Railroads, the electrical telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced weapons were widely used. The war left an estimated 700,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian deaths, making it the deadliest in American history. The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming world wars.

A steamboat is a boat that is propelled primarily by steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels. The term steamboat is used to refer to small steam-powered vessels working on lakes, rivers, and in short-sea shipping. The development of the steamboat led to the larger steamship, which is a seaworthy and often ocean-going ship.

The New Orleans massacre of 1866 occurred on July 30, when a peaceful demonstration of mostly Black freedmen was set upon by a mob of white rioters, many of whom had been soldiers of the recently defeated Confederate States of America, leading to a full-scale massacre. The violence erupted outside the Mechanics Institute, site of a reconvened Louisiana Constitutional Convention. According to the official report, 38 were killed and 146 wounded, of whom 34 dead and 119 wounded were Black freedmen. Unofficial estimates were higher. Gilles Vandal estimated 40 to 50 Black Americans were killed and more than 150 Black Americans wounded. Others have claimed nearly 200 were killed. In addition, three white convention attendees were killed, as was one white protester. During much of the American Civil War, New Orleans had been occupied and under martial law imposed by the Union. On May 12, 1866, Mayor John T. Monroe, a Democrat who had ardently supported the Confederacy, was reinstated as acting mayor, the position he held before the war. Judge R. K. Howell was elected as chairman of the convention, with the goal of increasing participation by voters likely to vote for removal of the Black Codes. The massacre expressed conflicts deeply rooted in the social structure of Louisiana. The New Orleans massacre was a continuation of a longer shooting war over slavery (beginning with Bleeding Kansas in 1859), of which the 1861–1865 hostilities were merely the largest part. More than half of the whites were Confederate veterans, and nearly half of the Black Americans were veterans of the Union army. The national reaction of outrage at the earlier Memphis riots of 1866 and the New Orleans massacre helped the Radical Republicans win a majority in both houses of Congress in the 1866 midterm elections. The riots catalyzed support for the Fourteenth Amendment, extending suffrage and full citizenship to freedmen, and the Reconstruction Acts to establish military districts for the national government to oversee areas of the South and work to change their social arrangements.

The Staten Island Ferry is a fare-free passenger ferry route operated by the New York City Department of Transportation. The ferry's single route runs 5.2 miles (8.4 km) through New York Harbor between the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Staten Island, with ferry boats completing the trip in about 25 minutes. The ferry operates 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, with boats leaving every 15 to 20 minutes during peak hours and every 30 minutes at other times. Apart from NYC Ferry's St. George route, it is the only direct mass-transit connection between the two boroughs. Historically, the Staten Island Ferry has charged a relatively low fare compared to other modes of transit in the area; and since 1997, the route has been fare-free. The Staten Island Ferry is one of several ferry systems in the New York City area and is operated separately from systems like NYC Ferry and NY Waterway. The Staten Island Ferry route terminates at Whitehall Terminal, on Whitehall Street in Lower Manhattan, and at St. George Terminal, in St. George, Staten Island. At Whitehall, connections are available to the New York City Subway and several local New York City Bus routes. At St. George, there are transfers to the Staten Island Railway and to the St. George Bus Terminal's many bus routes. Using OMNY fare cards, passengers from Manhattan can exit a subway or bus on Whitehall Street, take the ferry for free, and have a free second transfer to a train or bus at St. George. Conversely, passengers from Staten Island can freely transfer to a subway or bus in Manhattan after riding the ferry. The Staten Island Ferry originated in 1817 when the Richmond Turnpike Company started a steamboat service from Manhattan to Staten Island. Cornelius Vanderbilt bought the Richmond Turnpike Company in 1838, and it was merged with two competitors in 1853. The combined company was in turn sold to the Staten Island Railroad Company in 1864. The Staten Island Ferry was then sold to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1884, and the government of New York City assumed control of the ferry in 1905. In the early 20th century, the city and private companies also operated ferry routes from Staten Island to Brooklyn. Owing to the growth of vehicular travel, all of the routes from Staten Island to Brooklyn were decommissioned by the mid-1960s; but popular demand preserved the route to Manhattan. By 1967, the Staten Island-to-Manhattan ferry was the only commuter ferry within the entire city. A fast ferry route from Staten Island to Midtown Manhattan ran briefly from 1997 to 1998; proposals to revive the route resurfaced in the 2010s and materialized in the 2021 launch of the parallel NYC Ferry route. With 16,692,900 riders in 2025, the Staten Island Ferry is the busiest ferry route in the United States and the world's busiest passenger-only ferry system, thanks largely to the lack of other transit connections between Staten Island and the other boroughs. The ferry is also popular among tourists and visitors due to the free-of-charge views of the New York Harbor a trip provides. The ferry has been featured in several films.

Emperor Meiji (3 November 1852 – 29 July 1912), personal name Mutsuhito, was Emperor of Japan from 30 January 1867 until his death in 1912. The Meiji Restoration proclaimed the Empire of Japan in 1868, beginning the Meiji era. During his reign, Japan transformed from a feudal state under the Tokugawa shogunate into a major imperial power. At the time of Mutsuhito's birth, Japan was a feudal and pre-industrial country dominated by the isolationist Tokugawa shogunate and the daimyō subject to it, who ruled over Japan's 270 decentralized domains. The opening of Japan to the West from 1854 fueled domestic demands for modernization, and when Mutsuhito became emperor after the death of his father Emperor Kōmei in 1867, it triggered the Boshin War, in which samurai (mostly from the Chōshū and Satsuma Domains) defeated the shogunate and restored power in his name. Documents issued during his reign include the Charter Oath of 1868, Meiji Constitution of 1889, Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors of 1882, and Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890, in which he was advised by a group of oligarchs known as the genrō. Other major events which occurred during his reign include the establishment of the Cabinet in 1885, Privy Council in 1888, Imperial Diet in 1890, and military victories over China in the First Sino-Japanese War and over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. Taiwan and Korea were annexed in 1895 and 1910, respectively. Emperor Meiji died aged 59 at Meiji Palace in Tokyo, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Yoshihito.

The Black Tom explosion was an act of arson and sabotage by field agents of the Office of Naval Intelligence of the German Empire to destroy U.S.-made munitions awaiting shipment to the Allies during World War I. The explosions occurred on July 30, 1916, in New York Harbor, killing at least seven people and wounding hundreds more. It also caused damage to military goods worth some $20 million ($590 million in 2025 dollars). This incident, which happened before the United States entry into World War I, also damaged the Statue of Liberty. It is one of the largest artificial non-nuclear explosions in history.

Montevideo is the capital and largest city of Uruguay. As of the 2023 census, the city proper has a population of 1,287,452, making up about 36.8% of the country's total population, in an area of 201 square kilometers (78 sq mi). Montevideo is situated on the southern coast of the country, on the northeastern bank of the Río de la Plata.

Walter Elias Disney was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film producer, he holds the record for most Academy Awards won (22) and nominations (59) by an individual. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honors. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress and have also been named as some of the greatest films ever by the American Film Institute.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

The Trans-Canada Highway is a transcontinental highway system within the country of Canada. The system traverses all ten provinces of Canada, and the main route travels 7,821 kilometres (4,860 mi) between Victoria, British Columbia, and St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, making it one of the longest routes of its type in the world.

The England national football team, nicknamed The Three Lions, have represented England in men's international football since the first international match in 1872. They are governed by The Football Association (FA), the governing body for football in England, which is affiliated with UEFA and FIFA. England competes in three major international tournaments: the FIFA World Cup, UEFA European Championship and UEFA Nations League.

The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina wars and a proxy war of the Cold War. The Vietnam War was one of the postcolonial wars of national liberation, a theater in the Cold War, and a civil war, with civil warfare a defining feature from the outset. Direct US military involvement escalated from 1965 until US forces were withdrawn in 1973. The fighting spilled into the Laotian and Cambodian civil wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.

The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. The Apollo program was conceived in 1960 in the Dwight D. Eisenhower presidency during Project Mercury and executed after Project Gemini. The Apollo program was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in his address to the U.S. Congress on May 25, 1961.

All Nippon Airways (ANA) is a Japanese airline headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. ANA operates services to over 100 both domestic and international destinations with its main hub at Haneda and Narita. both airports located in Tokyo. It is Japan's largest airline, ahead of its main rival Japan Airlines. As of March 2024, the airline has approximately 12,800 employees. The airline joined as a Star Alliance member in October 1999.

The Watergate scandal, or simply Watergate, was a political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon. On June 17, 1972, operatives associated with Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign were caught burglarizing and planting listening devices in the Democratic National Committee headquarters at Washington, D.C.'s Watergate complex. Nixon's efforts to conceal his administration's involvement led to an impeachment process and ultimately to his resignation in August 1974.

James Riddle Hoffa was an American labor union leader who served as the General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) from 1957 to 1971. He was alleged to have ties to organized crime, and disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1975.

Vanuatu, officially the Republic of Vanuatu, is an archipelagic country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is 1,750 km (1,090 mi) east of northern Australia, 540 km (340 mi) northeast of New Caledonia, east of New Guinea, southeast of Solomon Islands, and west of Fiji.

The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel.

Łódź is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located 120 km (75 mi) south-west of Warsaw. As of 2025, Łódź has a population of 639,890, making it the country's fourth largest city.

Ian Reginald Edward Gow was a British politician and solicitor. As a member of the Conservative Party, he served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Eastbourne from 1974, until his assassination in 1990 by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) outside his home in East Sussex.

The Volkswagen Beetle, officially the Volkswagen Type 1, is a small family car produced by the German company Volkswagen from 1938 to 2003. A global cultural icon known for its bug-like design, the Beetle is widely regarded as one of the most influential cars of the 20th century. Its production period of 65 years is the longest for any single generation of automobile. With 21.5 million units produced over twenty locations worldwide, the Beetle is the best-selling car of a single platform in history and the second best-selling car nameplate of the 20th century.

The Pyrenean ibex, Aragonese and Spanish common name bucardo, Basque common name bukardo, Catalan common name herc and French common name bouquetin, was one of the four subspecies of the Iberian ibex or Iberian wild goat, a species native to the Iberian Peninsula and immediately adjacent southern France. The Pyrenean ibex occurred in the northeastern part of the species' range in the Cantabrian Mountains and the Pyrenees, in northern Spain and the far south of France. This subspecies was common during the Holocene and Upper Pleistocene, during which their morphology, primarily some skulls, of the Pyrenean ibex evolved to be larger than other subspecies of Capra pyrenaica in southwestern Europe from the same time.

Top of the Pops (TOTP) is a British record chart television programme, made by the BBC and broadcast weekly between 1 January 1964 and 30 July 2006. The programme was the world's longest-running weekly music show. For most of its history, it was broadcast on Thursday evenings on BBC One. Each show consisted of performances of some of the week's best-selling popular music records, usually excluding any tracks moving down the chart, including a rundown of that week's singles chart. This was originally the Top 20, though this varied throughout the show's history. The Top 30 was used from 1969 and the Top 40 from 1984.

The 2006 Qana airstrike was an airstrike carried out by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) on a three-story building in the small community of al-Khuraybah near the South Lebanese village of Qana on July 30, 2006, during the 2006 Lebanon War. The strike killed 28 civilians, 16 of whom were children. Israel halted airstrikes for 48 hours following the attack, amid increasing calls for a ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas.

Zara Anne Elizabeth Tindall is a British equestrian, Olympian, and member of the British royal family. She is the daughter of Anne, Princess Royal, and Captain Mark Phillips, and the eldest niece of King Charles III. At birth she was sixth in the line of succession to the British throne during the reign of her maternal grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, and as of 2026 is 23rd.

Two severe power outages affected most of northern and eastern India on 30 and 31 July 2012. The 30 July 2012 blackout affected over 400 million people and lasted about 13.5 hrs. During that period, it was the largest power outage in history by number of people affected, beating the January 2001 blackout in Northern India. Similar conditions caused a blackout on the next day, which remained the largest power outage in history as of May 2025. The outage on 30 July affected more than 620 million people, spread across 22 states in Northern, Eastern, and Northeast India. An estimated 32 gigawatts of generating capacity was taken offline. Of the affected population, 320 million initially had power, while the rest lacked direct access. Electric service was restored in the affected locations between 31 July and 1 August 2012.

Mars 2020 is a NASA mission that includes the rover Perseverance, the now-grounded small robotic helicopter Ingenuity, and associated delivery systems, as part of the Mars Exploration Program. Mars 2020 was launched on an Atlas V rocket at 11:50:01 UTC on July 30, 2020, and landed in the Martian crater Jezero on February 18, 2021, with confirmation received at 20:55 UTC. On March 5, 2021, NASA named the landing site Octavia E. Butler Landing. As of 30 September 2026, Perseverance has been on Mars for 1994 sols. Ingenuity operated on Mars for 1042 sols before sustaining serious damage to its rotor blades, possibly all four, causing NASA to retire the craft on January 25, 2024.

On 30 July 2025, at 11:24:52 PETT, a Mw 8.8 megathrust earthquake struck off the eastern coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East, 119 km (74 mi) east-southeast of the coastal city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. It was the most powerful earthquake recorded worldwide since the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, and is tied with the 1906 Ecuador–Colombia and 2010 Chile earthquakes as the sixth-strongest ever recorded by seismometers. However, it caused minimal damage compared to other earthquakes of similar magnitude. The earthquake caused moderate damage and multiple injuries in Kamchatka Krai and Sakhalin Oblast. The subsequent Pacific-wide tsunami was weaker than expected, with waves approximately 1 m (3 ft) or less in most places. However, a locally high run-up of 33.1 m (109 ft) was recorded in a steep narrow river valley near Vestnik Bay. One indirect fatality and 21 injuries were attributed to tsunami-related evacuations in Japan.

Since late July 2026, an estimated 80,000 people, mainly young men originating from Morocco, have illegally breached and crossed the border from Morocco into the Spanish autonomous city of Ceuta in North Africa, with smaller numbers attempting to cross to Melilla, another Spanish autonomous city about 400 kilometres (250 mi) away along the Mediterranean coastline. This overwhelmed local reception facilities, and also prompted the government of Ceuta to request that the Spanish government declare a national emergency. Most entered by swimming around the breakwaters of Tarajal and Benzú or by crossing on foot along the shoreline.