On This Day

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Important events of history that took place in India and elsewhere on today’s date.

30 April

🇮🇳 In India

1870 Dadasaheb Phalke, Indian producer-director-screenwriter, known as "the Father of Indian cinema", was born. His debut film, Raja Harishchandra, was the first Indian movie released in 1913, and is now known as India's first full-length feature film.

1927 M Fathima Beevi, first female judge to be a part of the Supreme Court of India, was born in Pathanamthitta, Kerala.

1944 Sonal Mansingh, Indian classical dancer and Guru Bharatanatyam and Odissi dancing style, was born.

🌎 Elsewhere

1030 Mahmud of Ghazni, founder of the Turkic Ghaznavid dynasty, ruling from 998 to 1030, died.

1494 Christopher Columbus arrived in Guantanamo Bay on his second voyage to the Americas.

1859 Charles Dickens' A Tale Of Two Cities is first published in literary periodical All the Year Round (weekly installments until Nov 26).

1897 English physicist J J Thomson announced his discovery of the electron, which helped revolutionize the knowledge of atomic structure. He was later awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.

1916 Germany and its World War I allies become the first countries to use daylight saving time (DST). DST is the practice of advancing clocks during warmer months so that darkness falls at a later clock time. The rationale, at that time, was to save energy to aid the war effort. Other European countries, such as the United Kingdom, first introduced DST later that year.

1945 With the Soviet troops just within a block or two of the Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler shot himself to death to avoid capture. His new wife Eva Braun, whom he married on the previous day, also committed suicide.

1952 Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl was first published in English.

1975 Vietnam War came to an end.

1989 World Wide Web (WWW) was first launched in the public domain by CERN scientist Tim Berners-Lee.

1993 Monica Seles, world number one women's tennis player of the time, was stabbed in the back during a quarter-final match in Hamburg.

2007 German Chancellor Angela Merkel officially handed over the Waldseemüller Map (oldest known document to name America) to the US Library of Congress.

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