Today in History....October 30

On this day in …

1775, the Continental Congress appoints seven members to serve on an administrative naval committee tasked with the acquisition, outfitting and manning of a naval fleet to be used in defense against the British
1864, the town of Helena, Montana, is founded by four gold miners who struck it rich at the appropriately named "Last Chance Gulch"

1938, the radio play "The War of the Worlds," starring Orson Welles, aired on CBS. (The live drama, which employed fake news reports, panicked some listeners who thought its portrayal of a Martian invasion was real.)

1945, the U.S. government announced the end of shoe rationing

1961,


The Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb, the "Tsar Bomba," with a force estimated at about 50 megatons

The Soviet Party Congress unanimously approved a resolution ordering the removal of Josef Stalin's body from Lenin's tomb


1975, the New York Daily News ran the headline "Ford to City: Drop Dead" a day after President Ford said he would veto any proposed federal bailout of New York City

1985, the launch of the space shuttle Challenger was witnessed by schoolteacher-astronaut Christa McAuliffe, who died when the spacecraft exploded after liftoff in January 1986
1995, by a razor-thin vote of 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent, Federalists prevailed over separatists in Quebec in a secession referendum

1996, after a four-hour trial, a Chinese court sentenced pro-democracy activist Wang Dan to 11 years in prison for "conspiring to subvert the Chinese government." (Wang was freed in April 1998 and sent into exile in the United States.)

2001, NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey snapped its first picture of Mars, one week after the spacecraft safely arrived in orbit around the Red Planet