1930

Events in 1930 101

• 1837 – 1930 Cosima Wagner (1837-1930) Died 1 April 1930, aged 92 Daughter of Franz Liszt and wife of Richard Wagner. After his death she directed the Bayreuth Festival for more than twenty years.
• 1844 – 1930 Ilya Repin (1844-1930) Died 29 September 1930, aged 86 Russian realist painter whose works include Barge Haulers on the Volga and Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan. He was the leading figure of the Peredvizhniki movement. He died at his home in Kuokkala, then part of Finland.
• 1844 – 1930 Robert Bridges (1844-1930) Died 21 April 1930, aged 85 English poet who was Poet Laureate from 1913 until his death. He published the poetry of his friend Gerard Manley Hopkins after Hopkins died. His best-known work is The Testament of Beauty.
• 1848 – 1930 Arthur Balfour (1848-1930) Died 19 March 1930, aged 81 British Conservative statesman who was Prime Minister from 1902 to 1905. As Foreign Secretary he issued the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which supported a Jewish national home in Palestine.
• 1857 – 1930 William Howard Taft 27th President — also Chief Justice William Howard Taft (Sep 15, 1857 – Mar 8, 1930) was the 27th President 1909-1913 and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 1921-1930 — the only person to hold both offices. He was the heaviest president at 340 pounds.
• 1858 – 1930 Christiaan Eijkman (1858-1930) Died 5 November 1930, aged 72 Dutch physician who showed that beriberi is caused by a dietary deficiency. His work led to the discovery of vitamins. He shared the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• 1859 – 1930 Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) Died 7 July 1930, aged 71 Scottish writer and physician who created the detective Sherlock Holmes. He also wrote historical novels and the science fiction novel The Lost World. In his later years he campaigned for spiritualism.
• 1861 – 1930 Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930) Died 13 May 1930, aged 68 Norwegian explorer, scientist and diplomat who crossed Greenland and led the Fram expedition toward the North Pole. As League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees he created the Nansen passport for stateless people. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922.
• 1870 – 1930 Miguel Primo de Rivera (1870-1930) Died 16 March 1930, aged 60 Spanish general who ruled Spain as dictator from 1923 to 1930 under King Alfonso XIII. He died in Paris less than two months after resigning.
• 1872 – 1930 F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead (1872-1930) Died 30 September 1930, aged 58 British Conservative politician and barrister who served as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for India. He was known for his sharp wit in speeches and in court.
• 1876 – 1930 Zewditu (1876-1930) Died 2 April 1930, aged 53 Empress of Ethiopia from 1916 and the first woman to rule Ethiopia in her own right. The regent Ras Tafari succeeded her and was crowned Haile Selassie.
• 1878 – 1930 Glenn Curtiss (1878-1930) Died 23 July 1930, aged 52 American aviation pioneer and manufacturer who founded what became the largest aircraft company in the United States. He built the first practical seaplanes. He also held early speed records on motorcycles.
• 1880 – 1930 Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) Died November 1930, aged 50 German geophysicist and meteorologist who proposed the theory of continental drift, the forerunner of plate tectonics. He died on the Greenland ice sheet during a relief journey from the Eismitte research station. His body was found the following spring.
• 1883 – 1930 Lon Chaney (1883-1930) Died 26 August 1930, aged 47 American silent film actor known as the Man of a Thousand Faces for his makeup and physical transformations. His best-known roles were in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera. He died of cancer shortly after making his only sound film.
• 1885 – 1930 D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) Died 2 March 1930, aged 44 English novelist and poet whose works include Sons and Lovers, Women in Love and Lady Chatterley's Lover. His frank treatment of sexuality and class led to censorship battles. He died of tuberculosis in Vence, France.
• 1892 – 1930 Mabel Normand (1892-1930) Died 23 February 1930, aged 37 American silent film comedian, screenwriter and director who worked with Mack Sennett and Charlie Chaplin. She was one of the most popular stars of early Hollywood comedy. She died of tuberculosis.
• 1893 – 1930 Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) Died 14 April 1930, aged 36 Russian Futurist poet and playwright who became the leading poetic voice of the early Soviet state. His works include The Bedbug and The Bathhouse. He died by suicide in Moscow.
• 1903 – 1930 Frank Ramsey (1903-1930) Died 19 January 1930, aged 26 English philosopher, mathematician and economist who made lasting contributions to logic, probability, decision theory and economics. Ramsey theory in combinatorics is named after him.
• 1907 – 1930 Horst Wessel (1907-1930) Died 23 February 1930, aged 22 Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) leader in Berlin who was shot by communists and died of his wounds. Joseph Goebbels turned him into a martyr for the Nazi movement. A song Wessel wrote became the party anthem.
• 1930 – 2024 Edna O'Brien (1930-2024) Died 27 July 2024, aged 93 Irish novelist whose The Country Girls was banned at home for its sexual candour and who became one of Ireland's great writers.
• 1930 – 2024 Faith Ringgold (1930-2024) Died 13 April 2024, aged 93 American artist and author whose narrative story quilts carried her political convictions.
• 1930 – 2023 Frances Sternhagen (1930-2023) Died 27 November 2023, aged 93 American actress of stage and screen who won two Tony Awards and appeared in Cheers and Sex and the City.
• 1930 – 2024 Fred Harris (1930-2024) Died 23 November 2024, aged 93 American politician and educator who served as a US senator for Oklahoma.
• 1930 – 2026 Frederick Wiseman (1930-2026) Died 16 February 2026, aged 96 American documentary filmmaker who spent six decades observing American institutions, from Titicut Follies to City Hall.
• 1930 – 2024 Gena Rowlands (1930-2024) Died 14 August 2024, aged 94 American actress whose ten films with her husband John Cassavetes, among them A Woman Under the Influence, remade screen acting.
• 1930 – 2025 Gene Hackman -- the ordinary man in extraordinary roles Eugene Allen Hackman (30 January 1930 - c. 18 February 2025) was an American actor widely regarded as one of the greatest of his generation and a defining figure of the New Hollywood movement. Over a career spanning four decades and more than 100 films, he won two Academy Awards -- Best Actor for The French Connection (1971) and Best Supporting Actor for Unforgiven (1992) -- and received five Oscar nominations in total. He played detectives, villains, coaches, politicians and fathers with a naturalistic intensity that made him one of the most respected and versatile performers in American cinema. He retired from acting in 2004 and lived quietly in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he was found dead alongside his wife Betsy Arakawa at their home in February 2025, aged 95.
• 1930 – 1959 J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson (1930-1959) Died 3 February 1959, aged 28 Richardson was a disc jockey and rock and roll singer known for the hit "Chantilly Lace." He died in a chartered plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, alongside Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, an event later remembered as "The Day the Music Died."
• 1930 – 2022 Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022) Died 13 September 2022, aged 91 French-Swiss director whose Breathless launched the New Wave and who spent six decades dismantling how films are made.
• 1930 – 2025 Jennifer Johnston (1930-2025) Died 25 February 2025, aged 95 Irish novelist whose work explored political and cultural tension in Ireland, particularly among the Anglo-Irish.
• 1930 – 2024 John Barth (1930-2024) Died 2 April 2024, aged 93 American writer whose novels combined philosophical complexity with bawdy satire.
• 1930 Pluto discovered Pluto discovered Clyde Tombaugh identified Pluto in February 1930 at Lowell Observatory, comparing photographic plates taken days apart to spot the one point of light that moved. It was named by Venetia Burney, an eleven-year-old in Oxford. Pluto was counted as the ninth planet until the IAU reclassified it as a dwarf planet in 2006.
• 1930 – 2026 Sonny Rollins (1930-2026) Died 25 May 2026, aged 95 American tenor saxophonist, among the greatest improvisers jazz has produced since the mid-1950s.
• 1930 – 2021 Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021) Died 26 November 2021, aged 91 American composer and lyricist whose Sweeney Todd, Company and Into the Woods remade the American musical.
• 1930 Whittle patents the turbojet Frank Whittle files patent for jet propulsion RAF officer Frank Whittle filed a patent for an aircraft engine driven by a gas turbine. It was the basis of the turbojet engine. His first engine ran on a test bed in 1937.
• 1930 Primo de Rivera resigns Spain's military dictator steps down General Miguel Primo de Rivera resigned as head of the Spanish government after losing the support of the army and King Alfonso XIII. General Dámaso Berenguer replaced him. The monarchy was badly weakened and fell the following year.
• 1930 Communist Party of Vietnam founded Ho Chi Minh unites rival communist groups At a meeting in Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh merged rival Vietnamese communist groups into a single party. Later that year it was renamed the Indochinese Communist Party. It went on to lead the struggle against French colonial rule.
• 1930 Yên Bái mutiny Vietnamese soldiers rise against French colonial rule Vietnamese soldiers in the French colonial army at Yên Bái rebelled, with support from the Vietnamese Nationalist Party. The French put the mutiny down within hours. The crackdown that followed destroyed the party.
• 1930 – 2015 Ruth Rendell (1930-2015) Died 2 May 2015, aged 85 Ruth Rendell was an English crime writer best known for her Chief Inspector Wexford detective novels and for darker psychological thrillers written under the pseudonym Barbara Vine. She published more than sixty novels and sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. Rendell sat in the House of Lords as a Labour peer from 1997.
• 1930 – 2024 Leon N. Cooper (1930-2024) Died 23 October 2024, aged 94 American physicist who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize for Physics for the BCS theory of superconductivity.
• 1930 1930 World Snooker Championship Joe Davis Dominance Winner: Joe Davis; Runner-up: Tom Dennis. Score: 25–12.
• 1930 Stalin's "Dizzy with Success" article Soviet leader temporarily slows forced collectivisation Joseph Stalin published an article in Pravda blaming local officials for excesses in the forced collectivisation of agriculture. After it appeared, millions of peasants left the collective farms. Pressure to collectivise resumed later in the year.
• 1930 – 2018 Tom Wolfe (1930-2018) Died 14 May 2018, aged 88 American author and journalist who pioneered New Journalism and wrote novels including The Bonfire of the Vanities and The Right Stuff. His distinctive white suits and satirical eye made him a fixture of American letters. He chronicled American society across six decades of writing.
• 1930 – 2025 Ion Iliescu (1930-2025) Died 5 August 2025, aged 95 Romanian politician who twice served as president of Romania, from 1990 to 1996 and from 2000 to 2004.
• 1930 Birds Eye frozen foods go on sale First commercially sold quick-frozen foods Quick-frozen foods made with Clarence Birdseye's process went on sale in stores in Springfield, Massachusetts. This was the start of the retail frozen food industry.
• 1930 Gandhi's Salt March Mass civil disobedience against the British salt tax Mohandas Gandhi led a march of about 385 kilometres from Sabarmati Ashram to the coastal village of Dandi to defy the British monopoly on salt. On 6 April he made salt from seawater, which set off a campaign of civil disobedience across India. Tens of thousands were arrested, and the march drew international attention to the Indian independence movement.
• 1930 – 1980 Steve McQueen (1930-1980) Died 7 November 1980, aged 50 American actor and one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s, known for films including The Great Escape, Bullitt, and The Magnificent Seven. His cool, understated screen persona and fondness for motorcycles and racing earned him the nickname "The King of Cool." He died of cancer in Mexico.
• 1930 – 2023 Sandra Day O'Connor (1930-2023) Died 1 December 2023, aged 93 American jurist who in 1981 became the first woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court, where she was for years its decisive vote.
• 1930 Brüning appointed German Chancellor Weimar Republic moves toward government by presidential decree President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Heinrich Brüning of the Centre Party as chancellor after Hermann Müller's coalition collapsed. Brüning had no majority in the Reichstag and governed through emergency decrees under Article 48. This weakened parliamentary democracy in Germany.
• 1930 Hays Code adopted Hollywood studios agree to a production code of moral standards The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America adopted the Motion Picture Production Code, which set out what could and could not be shown on screen. It was not strictly enforced until 1934. After that it shaped American film content for more than three decades.
• 1930 The Blue Angel premieres Marlene Dietrich becomes an international star Josef von Sternberg's film The Blue Angel premiered in Berlin, with Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich. It was one of the first major German sound films and was shot in both German and English versions. Dietrich left for Hollywood the night of the premiere.
• 1930 – 2017 Helmut Kohl (1930-2017) Died 16 June 2017, aged 87 German statesman who served as chancellor from 1982 to 1998 and presided over the reunification of Germany in 1990. He was a driving force behind European integration, including the creation of the euro. He remains one of the most consequential European leaders of the postwar era.
• 1930 Chittagong armoury raid Indian revolutionaries seize British armouries in Bengal Revolutionaries led by Surya Sen raided the police and auxiliary forces armouries in Chittagong and declared a provisional revolutionary government. British forces defeated them in fighting at Jalalabad Hill a few days later. The raid became a celebrated episode of armed resistance to British rule.
• 1930 London Naval Treaty signed Major naval powers limit submarines and cruisers The United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, France and Italy signed a treaty on naval armaments that extended the limits set at Washington in 1922. Britain, the US and Japan agreed to limits on cruisers, destroyers and submarines. The treaty caused bitter political controversy in Japan.
• 1930 Qissa Khwani Bazaar massacre British troops fire on unarmed protesters in Peshawar British troops opened fire on nonviolent protesters of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement in the Qissa Khwani Bazaar in Peshawar. Many people were killed. Soldiers of the Garhwal Rifles who refused to fire were court-martialled.
• 1930 Amy Johnson flies solo to Australia First woman to fly solo from England to Australia Amy Johnson took off from Croydon in a de Havilland Gipsy Moth named Jason and landed in Darwin nineteen days later. She was the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia. The flight made her an international celebrity.
• 1930 – 2025 George E. Smith (1930-2025) Died 28 May 2025, aged 95 American physicist who shared the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physics for co-inventing the charge-coupled device, the sensor behind digital photography.
• 1930 First airline stewardess Ellen Church flies as the first female flight attendant Ellen Church, a registered nurse, became the first airline stewardess when she flew on a Boeing Air Transport flight from Oakland to Chicago. Airlines soon hired more women as flight attendants.
• 1930 – 2015 Malcolm Fraser (1930-2015) Died 20 March 2015, aged 84 Malcolm Fraser served as Prime Minister of Australia from 1975 to 1983, coming to power after the controversial dismissal of Gough Whitlam's government by the Governor-General. His government pursued market-oriented economic reforms and multicultural immigration policy. Fraser later became a prominent critic of the major parties he had once led.
• 1930 Chrysler Building opens Art Deco skyscraper becomes the world's tallest building The Chrysler Building in Manhattan, designed by William Van Alen, opened to the public. Its spire made it the tallest building in the world until the Empire State Building was completed in 1931. It is still one of the best-known examples of Art Deco architecture.
• 1930 Carol II becomes King of Romania Exiled prince returns and replaces his young son on the throne Prince Carol, who had given up his right to the throne in 1925, flew back to Bucharest from exile. Parliament proclaimed him King Carol II on 8 June, replacing his son Michael. His reign moved Romania toward royal dictatorship.
• 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act signed US raises import duties on thousands of goods President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised US tariffs on more than 20,000 imported goods. Trading partners retaliated with tariffs of their own. The act is widely blamed for deepening the collapse of world trade during the Great Depression.
• 1930 – 2019 Ross Perot (1930-2019) Died 9 July 2019, aged 89 Ross Perot was an American businessman who founded Electronic Data Systems and Perot Systems, and ran two independent presidential campaigns in 1992 and 1996. His 1992 run drew nearly 19 percent of the popular vote, one of the strongest third-party showings in modern US history. He died in Dallas of leukemia.
• 1930 Allied occupation of the Rhineland ends Last French troops leave five years ahead of schedule The last French troops left the Rhineland under the terms agreed at the Hague Conference on the Young Plan. The Treaty of Versailles had allowed the occupation to continue until 1935. Germany still had to keep the Rhineland demilitarised.
• 1930 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty signed Britain agrees to end its mandate over Iraq Britain and the Kingdom of Iraq signed a treaty providing for Iraqi independence and admission to the League of Nations. In return, Britain kept air bases and military rights. Iraq became independent in 1932.
• 1930 – 2025 Theodore McCarrick (1930-2025) Died 3 April 2025, aged 94 Former Roman Catholic archbishop and cardinal, the first American prelate to resign from the College of Cardinals after allegations of sexual abuse.
• 1930 1930 FIFA World Cup The Inaugural Tournament The first ever World Cup, held to celebrate the centenary of Uruguay’s first constitution. Winner: Uruguay.
• 1930 – 2004 Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) Died 9 October 2004, aged 74 Derrida was a French philosopher who founded deconstruction, a method of critical analysis that profoundly influenced literary theory and continental philosophy. His work included "Of Grammatology" and "Writing and Difference."
• 1930 – 2002 Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) Died 23 January 2002, aged 71 Pierre Bourdieu was among the most influential sociologists of the late 20th century. His concepts of cultural capital and habitus, set out in works such as Distinction, analysed how social hierarchies are reproduced through taste and education. In his later years he became a prominent public critic of neoliberal globalisation.
• 1930 – 2012 Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) Died 25 August 2012, aged 82 American astronaut and the first person to walk on the Moon, during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. He died from complications following heart surgery.
• 1930 First British Empire Games Forerunner of the Commonwealth Games held in Hamilton, Ontario Hamilton, Ontario, hosted the first British Empire Games, with about 400 athletes from eleven nations. England topped the medal table. The event continues today as the Commonwealth Games.
• 1930 Trujillo takes power in the Dominican Republic Rafael Trujillo inaugurated as president After a coup against President Horacio Vásquez and an election marked by intimidation, Rafael Trujillo was inaugurated as president. He ruled the Dominican Republic as dictator until he was assassinated in 1961.
• 1930 Pact of San Sebastián Spanish republicans agree to overthrow the monarchy Republican and regionalist politicians met in San Sebastián and agreed on a coordinated plan to replace the Spanish monarchy with a republic. The committee they formed became the provisional government of the Second Spanish Republic in April 1931.
• 1930 – 2009 Frank McCourt (1930-2009) Died 19 July 2009, aged 78 McCourt was an Irish-American author who won the Pulitzer Prize for his memoir Angela's Ashes, recounting his impoverished childhood in Limerick, Ireland. The book became an international bestseller and was adapted into a film. He wrote two further memoirs later in his career.
• 1930 – 2002 Princess Margaret (1930-2002) Died 9 February 2002, aged 71 Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, was the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II. In the 1950s she gave up plans to marry the divorced Group Captain Peter Townsend, a decision seen as a clash between duty and personal life. Her later years were marked by ill health following several strokes.
• 1930 Leguía overthrown in Peru Sánchez Cerro's revolt ends the Oncenio Lieutenant Colonel Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro launched a revolt in Arequipa against President Augusto B. Leguía. Leguía was forced to resign within days. This ended his eleven-year rule, known as the Oncenio.
• 1930 – 2020 Sean Connery (1930-2020) Died 31 October 2020, aged 90 Sean Connery was a Scottish actor who became the first to play James Bond on screen, starring in seven Bond films, and later won an Academy Award for The Untouchables. He died on 31 October 2020 in the Bahamas.
• 1930 Argentine coup d'état General Uriburu overthrows President Yrigoyen General José Félix Uriburu led a military coup that removed the elected president Hipólito Yrigoyen. It was the first successful coup in modern Argentine history. It began the period known as the Infamous Decade.
• 1930 Scotch cellulose tape introduced 3M markets the first transparent adhesive tape The 3M company began selling Scotch cellulose tape, developed by engineer Richard Drew. It was the first transparent pressure-sensitive tape. It sold widely during the Depression as people used it to repair household items.
• 1930 Nazi breakthrough in German federal election NSDAP becomes the second-largest party in the Reichstag In the Reichstag election, the National Socialist German Workers' Party won 18.3 percent of the vote and went from 12 seats to 107. The result made the Nazis a major national force and made it much harder to form a parliamentary government in the Weimar Republic.
• 1930 – 2024 Thomas Stafford (1930-2024) Died 18 March 2024, aged 93 American astronaut who commanded Apollo 10 and later the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.
• 1930 – 2004 Ray Charles (1930-2004) Died 10 June 2004, aged 73 Ray Charles was a pioneering American musician who fused gospel, blues, and jazz to help create soul music. Hits like "Georgia on My Mind" and "Hit the Road Jack" made him one of the most influential performers of the 20th century.
• 1930 – 1999 Shel Silverstein (1930-1999) Died 10 May 1999, aged 68 Shel Silverstein was an American author, poet, and cartoonist best known for children's books including The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends. He was also an accomplished songwriter, writing hits such as A Boy Named Sue. He died of a heart attack at his home in Key West, Florida.
• 1930 Bobby Jones completes golf's Grand Slam Only player to win all four major titles of the era in one year Bobby Jones won the US Amateur at Merion, completing a sweep of the British Amateur, the Open Championship, the US Open and the US Amateur in a single year. No other golfer has done this. Jones retired from competitive golf soon afterwards, aged 28.
• 1930 – 2002 Richard Harris (1930-2002) Died 25 October 2002, aged 72 The Irish actor Richard Harris earned an Oscar nomination for This Sporting Life in 1963 and later for The Field, and had a hit single with the song 'MacArthur Park'. Known for a hard-living reputation, he revived his career with a role in Unforgiven and, at the end of his life, as Albus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films.
• 1930 Brazilian Revolution of 1930 Getúlio Vargas seizes power and ends the Old Republic An armed uprising led by Getúlio Vargas began in Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais and Paraíba, and the military removed President Washington Luís. Vargas took office as head of the provisional government on 3 November. This ended the First Brazilian Republic and began fifteen years of Vargas rule.
• 1930 R101 airship disaster British airship crashes in France on its first overseas flight The British airship R101 crashed and burned near Beauvais, France, on its way to India. Forty-eight of the 54 people on board died, including the Air Minister, Lord Thomson. The disaster ended Britain's programme of rigid airships.
• 1930 – 2000 Hafez al-Assad (1930-2000) Died 10 June 2000, aged 69 Hafez al-Assad ruled Syria for nearly thirty years after seizing power in a 1970 coup, building a police state around his Baath party and Alawite loyalists. He crushed a Muslim Brotherhood revolt at Hama in 1982 with tens of thousands of deaths. He was succeeded by his son Bashar.
• 1930 – 2026 Gladys West (1930-2026) Died 17 January 2026, aged 95 American mathematician whose modelling of the Earth's shape underpinned the development of the Global Positioning System.
• 1930 Musha Incident Seediq uprising against Japanese rule in Taiwan Seediq warriors led by Mona Rudao attacked Japanese settlers at a sports meeting in Musha, central Taiwan, and killed about 134 Japanese. Japanese forces suppressed the uprising over the following weeks, using aircraft and poison gas. It was the last major armed resistance to Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan.
• 1930 – 2021 Michael Collins (1930-2021) Died 28 April 2021, aged 90 American astronaut who piloted the Apollo 11 command module alone in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon.
• 1930 Coronation of Haile Selassie Ras Tafari crowned Emperor of Ethiopia Ras Tafari Makonnen was crowned Emperor Haile Selassie I in Addis Ababa, with foreign delegations present. He had become emperor after the death of Empress Zewditu in April. The coronation became a founding event for the Rastafari movement in Jamaica.
• 1930 First Round Table Conference opens British and Indian leaders meet in London on India's constitution King George V opened the first Round Table Conference in London to discuss constitutional reform in India. The Indian National Congress boycotted it because of the civil disobedience campaign. The conference ran until January 1931.
• 1930 Hamaguchi assassination attempt Japanese prime minister shot at Tokyo Station Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi was shot by a right-wing nationalist angry at Japan's acceptance of the London Naval Treaty. He survived the shooting but died of his wounds in 1931. The attack was part of a rise in political violence in Japan.
• 1930 – 2009 J.G. Ballard (1930-2009) Died 19 April 2009, aged 78 Ballard was a British author known for novels including Empire of the Sun, drawn from his childhood internment in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, and for dystopian science fiction such as Crash. His work influenced a wide range of writers and filmmakers. Empire of the Sun was adapted into a Steven Spielberg film in 1987.
• 1930 – 2013 Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) Died 21 March 2013, aged 82 Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist whose 1958 debut Things Fall Apart became one of the most widely read works of African literature. He died in Boston after a period of declining health.
• 1930 Pauli proposes the neutrino A new particle is suggested to save energy conservation in beta decay In a letter to physicists meeting in Tübingen, Wolfgang Pauli proposed that a light, neutral particle is emitted in beta decay. This would explain the apparent missing energy. Enrico Fermi later named the particle the neutrino, and it was detected in 1956.
• 1930 – 2014 Maximilian Schell (1930-2014) Died 1 February 2014, aged 83 Maximilian Schell, the Austrian-Swiss actor who won an Academy Award for "Judgment at Nuremberg," died in Innsbruck, Austria. He worked extensively in both European and Hollywood cinema. He was also nominated for an Oscar for his direction of a documentary about Marlene Dietrich.
• 1930 Collapse of the Bank of United States Largest US bank failure of its time The Bank of United States in New York closed after a run on its branches. About 400,000 depositors lost access to their savings. At the time it was the largest bank failure in American history, and it set off a wider banking panic in the Great Depression.
• 1930 – 2003 Robert Atkins (1930-2003) Died 17 April 2003, aged 72 Robert Atkins was a cardiologist who popularised the low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet set out in his 1972 book 'Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution'. The Atkins diet became a worldwide phenomenon in the early 2000s. He died from a head injury after falling on ice.
• 1930 – 1988 Robert Joffrey (1930-1988) Died 25 March 1988, aged 57 Robert Joffrey was an American dancer and choreographer who founded the Joffrey Ballet in 1956. His company became known for its eclectic repertoire, blending classical and contemporary works. He died of complications related to a chronic illness in New York.
• 1930 Iqbal's Allahabad Address Muhammad Iqbal calls for a Muslim state in north-west India In his presidential address to the All-India Muslim League at Allahabad, the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal proposed a consolidated Muslim state in north-west India. The speech is regarded as an early statement of the idea that led to Pakistan.