Today in History October 30

758 – Guangzhou is sacked by Arab and Persian pirates.

1831 – Nat Turner is arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in United States history.

1925 – John Logie Baird creates Britain’s first television transmitter.

1938 – Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, causing anxiety in some of the audience in the United States.

1941 – President Roosevelt approves $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations.

1944 – Holocaust: Anne and Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they die from disease the following year, shortly before the end of WWII.

1945 – Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signs a contract for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking the baseball color line.

1973 – The Bosphorus Bridge in Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosphorus for the second time.

1975 – Prince Juan Carlos I of Spain becomes acting head of state, taking over for the country’s ailing dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco.

2005 – The rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II) is reconsecrated after a thirteen-year rebuilding project.

39 BC – Julia the Elder, Roman daughter of Augustus (d. 14)

1632 – Christopher Wren, English physicist, mathematician, and architect, designed St Paul’s Cathedral (d. 1723)

1735 – John Adams, American lawyer and politician, 2nd President of the United States (d. 1826)

1885 – Ezra Pound, American poet and critic (d. 1972)

1915 – Fred W. Friendly, American journalist and producer (d. 1998)

1915 – Jane Randolph, American-Swiss actress and singer (d. 2009)

1935 – Robert Caro, American journalist and author

1939 – Grace Slick, American singer-songwriter

1466 – Johann Fust, German printer (b. c. 1400)

2000 – Steve Allen, American actor, television personality, game show panelist, and talk show host (b. 1921)