March 30 – Some Important Events on this day
240 BC 👉🏼 1st recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet ☄️
1282 👉🏼 The people of Sicily rebel against the Angevin king Charles I, in what becomes known as the Sicilian Vespers. ✔️ Read the article!
1796 👉🏼 Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician, discovers the construction of the heptadecagon.
1814 👉🏼 Napoleonic Wars: Sixth Coalition forces march into Paris after defeating Napoleon.
1856 👉🏼 Russia signs the Treaty of Paris, ending the Crimean War.
On that year Treaty of Paris settled the Crimean War between the the Russia Empire and an alliance made up of the Great Britain, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia.
The Crimean War had begun in 1853 with Russian encroaching on territories under Ottoman control. The terms of the treaty made the Black Sea neutral territory and forbade any military build-up in the area. It also freed up trade for all countries along the Danube river. Russia was forced to give up a number of territories and received back areas taken by the alliance including Sevastopol and Balaklava.
1858 👉🏼 Pencil with attached eraser patented by Hyman L Lipman of Philadelphia ✏️
1867 👉🏼 Alaska Purchase: US buys Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000 ($109 million in 2018), roughly 2 cents an acre.
As Russia completed its eastward expansion through Siberia, the country inevitably crossed the Bering Strait and established a presence in the northern Americas. This territory, first settled in the early 17th century, was known as Alaska, but very few Russians ever moved there.
Russia was damaged militarily by its defeat in the Crimean War, in which Britain and its ally France defeated the Empire. Russian Tsar Alexander II began looking for ways to sell Alaska to America, especially as the territory would be impossible to defend if Britain decided to attack it, and Britain held Canada as a colony at the time of the sale.
After the American Civil War concluded, negotiations began on selling Alaska to America, though opinion in both countries was against the deal. Many Russians did not want to give away a territory where gold had been discovered, and Americans did not want an ‘ice-box’ where very few people lived.
However, on this day, the two countries agreed on a purely symbolic sum of $7.2 million ($109 million in 2018), about 2 cents an acre. America had purchased 586,412 square miles (1,518,800 km2) of territory. Alaska would not be admitted as a state to the Union until 1959, and it remained sparsely populated until a gold rush in the late 19th century.
1870 👉🏼 15th Amendment to the US constitution is adopted, guarantees right to vote regardless of race 🇺🇸
1959 👉🏼 Dalai Lama flees China and is granted political asylum in India 🇮🇳
1979 👉🏼 Airey Neave, a British politician, is killed by a car bomb as he exits the Palace of Westminster. The Irish National Liberation Army claims responsibility.
Owned by the British crown, the current palace of Westminster replaced an earlier Medieval palace which burned down in 1834. The exterior was designed by the architect Charles Barry and the interior by Augustus Pugin in the Gothic Revival style. Construction began in 1840 and wasn’t finished until 1870.
The palace holds both the elected UK House of Commons and the appointed or heredity House of Lords and includes such well known monuments as the clock tower Big Ben and the larger Victoria Tower. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.
1984 👉🏼 World’s most valuable tip – New York police detective Robert Cunningham offers waitress Phyllis Penzo half of $1 lottery ticket, next day they win $6 million
1987 👉🏼 Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” sells for a record 22.5 million pounds ($39.7 million) 🌻