#TodayInHistory – August 30

August 30 – Some important events on this day.

257 👉🏼 St Sixtus II begins his reign as Catholic Pope
1146 👉🏼 European leaders outlaw crossbow, intending to end war for all time
1363 👉🏼 Beginning of the Battle of Lake Poyang; two Chinese rebel leaders Chen Youliang and Zhu Yuanzhang are pitted against each other in what was one of the largest naval battles in history during Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty
1590 👉🏼 Tokugawa Ieyasu enters Edo Castle (Traditional Japanese date: August 1, 1590)
1682 👉🏼 William Penn leaves England to sail to the New World

1862 👉🏼 Second Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Virginia ends with a Confederate victory over Union forces.
The culmination of the North Virginia campaign in 1862, the Union army led by John Pope faced the Confederates under General Robert E. Lee. Fought near the Bull Run tributary of the Potomac River half of Lee’s army under Major General Stonewall Jackson attacked Pope’s forces on the 29th with large losses on both sides.
The next day the rest of Lee’s army under lieutenant General James Longstreet launched a surprise right flanking attack in what was to be the largest simultaneous mass assault of the war. Pope’s forces could only retreat and starve off complete disaster by rearguard action.

1885 👉🏼 13,000 meteors seen in 1 hour near Andromeda
1914 👉🏼 Battle of Tannenberg (WWI) ends in destruction of Russian 2nd Narev army, ca. 170,000 killed or injured, German victory on Eastern Front
1928 👉🏼 1st Prime minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru requests independence of his country
1933 👉🏼 Air France forms from five French airlines

1941 👉🏼 Siege of Leningrad by German troops begins during WWII.
The Siege of Leningrad was one of the deadliest and most destructive sieges in the history of the world. Quite possibly the deadliest ever. It would last for 872 days, and there would be more than a million Soviet civilian casualties, plus another million Soviet military casualties and half a million German casualties.
The effect of the siege on the city was infamous. Food shortages were chronic, deaths from starvation, disease and cold were constant and cannibalism occurred throughout the years of the siege. The number of deaths in Leningrad was the single largest loss of life ever known in a modern city.
The Soviets managed to break the siege on 18 January 1943 by opening a narrow land corridor, but it would not be fully lifted until 27 January 1944 when they managed to fully repel the Germans on their drive west.

1963 👉🏼 Hotline communication link between the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and the Kremlin in Moscow installed. Often known as the “red telephone” no phones were ever used, relying instead on Teletype equipment, fax machines and most recently secure email.
1979 👉🏼 1st recorded occurrence of a comet hitting the sun, releases energy equal to one million hydrogen bombs

2017 👉🏼 Hurricane Irma forms near Cape Verde Islands, will go on to become category 5 hurricane and kill at least 102.
Hurricane Irma was the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the open Atlantic region, and was extremely destructive to several countries it hit: Barbuda, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, Anguilla, and the Virgin Islands, as well as in the mainland USA.
The hurricane formed on August 30 and dissipated on September 30, 2017. It became a Category 5 Hurricane on September 5, with maximum sustained winds of 180mph (280km/h). The destruction was severe as it traversed the Caribbean, with 95% of buildings on the island of Barbuda destroyed. Most residents were evacuated to Antigua, rendering the island uninhabited for the first time in modern history. A number of other Caribbean islands were completely devastated by the storm.
Irma made landfall in the US state of Florida as a Category 3, where it caused widespread damage, with a minimum of $50 billion, though not as much as had been forecast.
The affected areas had little respite however, as Hurricane Maria formed two weeks later, hitting some of the same areas and devastating Puerto Rico.