USS Indianapolis (CA-35), courtesy Naval History and Heritage Command, 80-G-425615

Today in History

• Baghdad is founded (762)
• The First Defenestration of Prague occurs (1419)
• The first representative assembly in the Americas, the Virginia House of Burgesses, meets in Jamestown, Virginia (1619)
• The first Masonic Grand Lodge in the future US is constituted in Massachusetts (1733)
• Armed Confederate veterans in New Orleans riot against a meeting of Radical Republicans, killing 48 (1866)
• Uruguay wins the first FIFA World Cup (1930)
• The USS Indianapolis, returning from delivering atomic bomb components to Tinian, is sunk by a Japanese submarine. Most of the sailors die following the sinking because the US Navy does not learn about it for four days (1945)
• “In God We Trust” becomes the US national motto (1956)
• The Trans-Canada Highway, longest highway in the world, officially opens (1962)
• Medicare and Medicaid become law (1965)
• The Apollo 15 mission lands on the Moon (1971)
• Watergate: Richard Nixon releases subpoenaed White House tapes in response to a Supreme Court order (1974)
• Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa disappears from a parking lot in a Detroit suburb. He is never seen again (1975)
• The last “old style” Volkwagen Beetle rolls of an assembly line in Mexico (2003)
• The BBC show Top of the Pops, the world’s longest-running music show, goes off the air (2006)

Birthdays

• Emily Brontë, author (1818)
• Thorstein Veblen, economist (1857)
• Henry Ford, founded Ford Motor Company (1863)
• Casey Stengel, baseball manager (1890)
• C. Northcote Parkinson, historian and author, creator of “Parkinson’s Law” (1909)
• Sid Krofft, puppeteer and producer (1929
• Bud Selig, baseball commissioner (1934)
• Buddy Guy, blues musician (1936)
• Peter Bogdanovich, filmmaker (1939)
• Paul Anka, singer-songwriter (1941)
• Arnold Schwarzenegger, bodybuilder, actor, and politician (1947)
• Ken Olin, actor (1954)
• Delta Burke, actress (1956)
• Anita Hill, lawyer and academic (1956)
• Kate Bush, singer-songwriter (1958)
• Richard Linklater, filmmaker (1960)
• Laurence Fishburne, actor (1961)
• Lisa Kudrow, actress (1963)
• Vivica A. Fox, actress (1964)
• Terry Crews, football player and actor (1968)
• Christopher Nolan, filmmaker (1970)
• Tom Green, comedian and actor (1971)
• Hilary Swank, actress (1974)
• Jaime Pressly, actress (1977)

Deaths

• William Penn, founded Pennsylvania (1718)
• Thomas Gray, poet (1771)
• George Pickett, Confederate general (1875)
• Otto von Bismarck, German leader (1898)
• Meiji, Emperor of Japan (1912)
• Joyce Kilmer, poet (1918)
• Junichiro Tanizaki, author (1965)
• George Szell, conductor (1970)
• James Blish, author and critic (1975)
• Howard Dietz, songwriter (1983)
• Joe Shuster, co-creator of Superman (1992)
• Claudette Colbert, actress (1996)
• Bao Dai, Vietnamese emperor (1997)
• Buffalo Bob Smith, Howdy Doody host (1998)
• Sam Phillips, record producer (2003)
• Michelangelo Antonioni, filmmaker 92007)
• Ingmar Bergman, filmmaker (2007)
• Maeve Binchy, author 92012)
• Gloria DeHaven, actress (2016)

Holidays and Celebrations

• Feast of the Throne (Morocco)
• Independence Day (Vanuatu)
• International Day of Friendship
• Dia del Amigo (Paraguay)
• Martyrs Day (South Sudan)
• National Chicken and Waffles Day (US)
• Cheesecake Day (US)
• Father-in-Law Day (US)
• National Whistleblowers Appreciation Day (US)
• Paperback Book Day (US)
• World Day Against Trafficking in Persons

July 30 is the 211th day of the year (212th in leap years). There are 154 days remaining until the end of the year.