#TodayInHistory – December 30
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December 30 – Some important events on this day
1460 ππΌ Wars of the Roses: Battle of Wakefield (Northern England), Duke of York killed and his forces soundly defeated by forces for King Henry VI
1703 ππΌ Tokyo hit by Earthquake, about 37,000 die
1853 ππΌ A dinner party is held inside a life-size model of an Iguanodon (ornithopod dinosaur) created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and Sir Richard Owen in south London
1906 ππΌ The All India Muslim League is founded in Dacca, East Bengal, British India Empire, later laid down the foundations of Pakistan
1907 ππΌ Abraham Mills’ commission declares Abner Doubleday invented baseball
1916 ππΌ Rasputin is murdered
1922 ππΌ Creation of the USSR formally proclaimed in Moscow from the Bolshoi Theatre, Soviet Union organized as a federation of RSFSR, Ukrainian SSR, Belorussian SSR and Transcaucasian SSR.
In October 1918 the Bolsheviks in Russia overthrew the provisional government that had been established through a revolution in February that year. Almost immediately, an extremely devastating and deadly civil war erupted throughout the country.
By 1922 the Bolsheviks had destroyed their counter-revolutionary enemies, various independence movements and non-Bolshevik socialist foes. This had allowed them to create and sign the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, which formed a union of the various Soviet republics – Russia, Ukraine, Transcaucasia and Byelorussia – into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or the Soviet Union.
This communist union would endure for almost seventy years and would greatly expand beyond its original four republics into fifteen. By the late 1980s however, economic and political pressure for an end to the dictatorship led to the gradual disintegration of the Soviet Union.
The leaders of three of the founding republics met on December 9, 1991, in Belarus, and agreed to dissolve the Union on December 26 by denouncing the Treaty and declaring it void. Thus the communist flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time that night and the various republics became independent states.
1924 ππΌ Astronomer Edwin Hubble formally announces existence of other galactic systems at meeting of the American Astronomical Society
1941 ππΌ In an emotional speech to the Canadian Parliament Winston Churchill states Britain will never surrender to “Hitler and his Nazi gang” and that “they have asked for total war. Let us make sure they get it”. Afterwards Yousef Karsh captures him in his famous photograph, “The Roaring Lion”.
1950 ππΌ Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia become Independent states within the French Union