July 30

Today in History
• 762 - City of Baghdad founded by Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur, just north of ancient Baghdad
• 1419 - Hussites, storm town hall in Prague and throw Catholic councillors out the windows
• 1619 - House of Burgesses Virginia forms, 1st elective American governing body
• 1715 - Spanish gold and silver fleet disappears off St Lucie, Florida
• 1733 - Society of Freemasons opens 1st American lodge in Boston
• 1739 - Caspar Wistar begins glass manufacturing in Allowaystown, New Jersey
• 1792 - 500 Marseillaisian men sing France's national anthem for 1st time
• 1822 - James Varick becomes 1st bishop of African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church


Holidays - Traditional and Obscure
• Armed Forces Day (Guatemala)
• Enthronement in Morocco
• International Day of Friendship
• Martyrs' Day in South Sudan
• National Cheesecake Day
• Reek Sunday
• Vanuatu Independence Day
• World Snorkeling Day

Birthdays
• 1549 - Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany
• 1815 - Thomas Jackson Rodman, inventor of the rodman gun and perforated-cake gunpowder
• 1818 - John Heemskerk, Dutch politician (Minister of the Interior 1866-88)
• 1831 - Helena Blavatsky, occultist, philosopher, and author (co-founded Theosophical Society)
• 1859 - Henry Louis Smith, American physicist who made the first X-ray photograph
• 1863 - Henry Ford, Dearborn Township, Michigan, auto maker, Ford
• 1872 - Clémentine, Princess of Belgium, wife of Prince Napoleon Bonaparte V
• 1889 - Vladimir K Zworykin, U.S.S.R., electronics engineer/inventor, father of TV