#TodayInHistory – June 30

June 30 – Some important events on this day.

1294 👉🏼 Jews are expelled from Berne, Switzerland 🇨🇭
1520 👉🏼 Spanish conquistadors are expelled from Tenochtitlan following an Aztec revolt against their rule under Hernán Cortés during “La Noche Triste” (the Night of Sadness). Many soldiers drown in the escape, and Aztec emperor Montezuma II dies in the struggle.
1860 👉🏼 Famous debate on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution held at the Oxford University Museum and dominated by arguments between Thomas Henry Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce
1863 👉🏼 Dutch colony Suriname counts population of 33,000 slaves
1898 👉🏼 Winton Motor Carriage Company publishes the first known automobile ad in Scientific American using the headline “dispense with a horse.”
1905 👉🏼 In Russia, the “Potemkin” arrives at Odessa, where sailors take the bodies of dead crewman ashore; sailors join civilians in revolutionary actions of the ‘1905 Revolution’

1908 👉🏼 A giant fireball, most likely caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet flattens 80 million trees near the Stony Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate, Russia, in the largest impact event in recorded history.
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1916 👉🏼 British General Douglas Haig reports “The men are in splendid spirits” the day before the Battle of the Somme began.
The Battle of the Somme was both the largest battle on the Western Front of World War I and one of the deadliest in history, with more than a million casualties. The plan was laid at the Chantilly Conference in December 1915 – the Allied forces would take the pressure off French forces at the Battle of Verdun by pushing through the German lines at the Somme.
As with many grueling World War I encounters the battle was neither conclusive or quick. The first day of the battle – 1 July 1916 – was the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army, with more than 57,000 casualties.
While the Allied forces had pushed 10km into German territory by the battle’s end, they had not seized the French towns of Péronne or Bapaume, and debate exists over whether the battle was necessary or militarily significant.
The tank was first premiered at the Somme – although early units could only go 6 km per hour and often broke down.

1934 👉🏼 “Night of Long Knives” – Adolf Hitler stages a bloody purge of the Nazi party.
In Germany, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler orders a bloody purge of his own political party, assassinating hundreds of Nazis whom he believed had the potential to become political enemies in the future. The leadership of the Nazi Storm Troopers (SA), whose four million members had helped bring Hitler to power in the early 1930s, was especially targeted. Hitler feared that some of his followers had taken his early “National Socialism” propaganda too seriously and thus might compromise his plan to suppress workers’ rights in exchange for German industry making the country war-ready.

1936 👉🏼 Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, one of the best-selling novels of all time and the basis for a blockbuster 1939 movie, is published.
1937 👉🏼 The world’s first emergency call telephone service is launched in London using the number 999
1938 👉🏼 Superman 1st appears in DC Comics’ Action Comics Series issue #1
1992 👉🏼 South African ANC President Nelson Mandela meets with UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali at Dakar
2002 👉🏼 FIFA World Cup Final, International Stadium, Yokohama, Japan: Ronaldo scores twice as Brazil beats Germany, 2-0 to win record 5th title. This was first World Cup held in Asia ⚽️
2005 👉🏼 Spain legalizes same-sex marriage 👨🏼‍🤝‍👨🏻