1930

1930 is a common year starting on Wednesday.

Events

January-February

• January 6 – The first diesel-engine automobile trip is completed (Indianapolis, Indiana, to New York City).
• February 18 – While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto
• February 18  – Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in an airplane and also the first cow to be milked in an airplane.

March

• March 2 – Mohandas Gandhi informs British viceroy of India that civil disobedience would begin nine days later
• March 5 – Danish painter Einar Wegener goes through a sexual reassignment surgery and takes the name Lili Elbe
• March 6 – First frozen food products in USA
• March 12 – Mohandas Gandhi sets off to a 200-mile protest march towards the sea with 78 followers to protest the British monopoly on salt – more will join them during the Salt March that ends in April 5
• March 28 – Constantinople and Angora change their names to Istanbul and Ankara
• March 29 – Heinrich Brüning is appointed German Reichskanzler
• March 31 – The Motion Pictures Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in motion pictures for the next forty years

April-May

• April 5 – In an act of civil disobedience, Mahatma Gandhi breaks British law after marching to the sea and making salt.
• April 6 – Hostess Twinkies are invented.
• April 21 – Fire in Ohio State Penitentiary near Columbus kills 320
• April 22 – The United Kingdom, Japan and the United States sign the London Naval Treaty regulating submarine warfare and limiting shipbuilding.
• April 28 – The first night game in organized baseball history takes place in Independence, Kansas.
• May 4-5 – Mohandas Gandhi is arrested again
• May 15 – Aboard a Boeing tri-motor, Ellen Church becomes the first airline stewardess (the flight was from Oakland, California to Chicago, Illinois).
• May 17 – French foreign minister André Tardieu decides to withdraw the remaining French troops from the Rheinland. They depart by June 30
• May 20 – Sergei Eisenstein arrives to New York City
• May 24 – Amy Johnson lands in Darwin, Australia becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia (she left on May 5 for the 11,000 mile flight).
• May 30 – Sergei Eisenstein arrives to Hollywood to work for Paramount Pictures – they part ways by October

June-August

• June 9 – Chicago Tribune journalist Alfred Lingle is shot in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Newspapers promise $55,000 reward for information. Liddle is later found to have had contacts to organized crime
• June 17 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law.
• June 17  – Bonus Army: Around a thousand World War I veterans mass at the United States Capitol as the U.S. Senate considers a bill that would give them certain benefits.
• June 21 – One-year conscription comes into force in France
• July 7 – Lapua Movement marches in Helsinki, Finland
• July 7  – Building of the Boulder Dam (now known as Hoover Dam) is started.
• July 13 – The first football World Cup starts: Lucien Laurent scores the first goal, for France against Mexico
• July 30 – Uruguay beat Argentina in the first football World Cup Final
• July 31 – The radio mystery program The Shadow airs for the first time.
• August 7 – Richard Bedford Bennett becomes Canada's eleventh prime minister.
• August 9 – Betty Boop premiers in the animated film Dizzy Dishes.
• August 12 – Turkish troops move into Persia to fight Kurdish insurgents
• August 27 – Military junta takes over in Peru

September-December

• September 6 – Josef Felix Urileu makes a successful military coup in Argentina
• September 12 – Wilfred Rhodes end his 1110-game first-class career by taking 5 for 95 for H.D.G. Leveson Gower's XI against the Australians.
• September 14 – National socialists win 107 seats in German parliament – 18.3% of all the votes makes them second largest party
• September 16 – overthrow of Hipólito Yrigoyen, President of Argentina.
• October 5 – British Airship R101 crashed in France en-route to India on its maiden voyage.
• October 24 – Brazil – Revolution of 1930 by Getúlio Dornelles Vargas
• November 2 – Haile Selassie is crowned emperor of Ethiopia.
• December 2 – Great Depression: US President Herbert Hoover goes before Congress and asks for a US$150 million public works program to help generate jobs and stimulate the economy.
• December 19 – Merap volcano erupts – 1300 dead
• December 28 – Mohandas Gandhi leaves for Britain for negotiations

Unknown dates

• British White Paper demands restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine
• Rafael Leónidas Trujillo takes over in the Dominican Republic
• The Federal Bureau of Narcotics replaces the Narcotics Division of the Prohibition Unit.
• Walther Bothe and H. Becker discover the neutron.
• Abkhazia and Georgia, autonomous republics of the Soviet Union, are merged.

Year in topic

• 1930 in aviation
• 1930 in film
  • All Quiet on the Western Front
• 1930 in literature
• 1930 in music
• 1930 in rail transport
  • General Motors acquires both Electro-Motive Corporation and Winton Engine Company and combines them to form General Motors Electro-Motive Division.
• 1930 in sports
  • Uruguay wins Football World Cup on home ground
  • British Empire Games held in Hamilton, Canada
• 1930 in television
  • May 22 – An audience at Proctor's Theatre in Schenectady becomes the first to see a closed-circuit television signal projected onto a big screen.
  • November – W9XAP in Chicago broadcasts the U.S. senatorial election returns, which was apparently the first time a senatorial race, with non-stop vote tallies, was ever televised
  • December 7 – W1XAV in Boston broadcasts video from a CBS radio program, The Fox Trappers orchestra program. The broadcast also included the first television commercial (for I. J. Fox Furriers, who sponsored the radio show)
  • The BBC begins regular television transmission

Births

January-April

• January 2 – Julius LaRosa, singer
• January 25 – Tanya Savicheva, Russian schoolgirl
• January 29 – Bobby Bland, American blues singer
• March 3 – Heiner Geißler, German politician
• March 6 – Lorin Maazel, French-born American conductor
• March 7 – Antony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon
• March 15 – Zhores Ivanovich Alferov, Russian physicist
• March 17 – James Irwin, astronaut (d. 1991)
• March 19 – Ornette Coleman, American musician
• March 22 – Stephen Sondheim, American composer and lyricist
• March 22 – Pat Robertson, American televangelist
• March 24 – Steve McQueen, American actor, film director, and producer (d. 1980)
• March 25 – John Keel, American author
• March 26 – Sandra Day O'Connor, U.S. Supreme Court justice
• March 27 – David Janssen, American actor (d. 1980)
• March 30 – John Astin, American actor
• March 30 – Rolf Harris, Australian-born entertainer
• March 30 – Peter Marshall, American game show host
• April 3 – Helmut Kohl, Chancellor of Germany
• April 10 – Claude Bolling, French jazz pianist and composer
• April 15 – Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, President of Iceland
• April 21 – Silvana Mangano, Italian actress (d. 1989)
• April 22 – Georges Schoeters, Belgian-born activist
• April 25 – Paul Mazursky, American director and writer
• April 29 – Jean Rochefort, French actor

May-August

• May 4 – Roberta Peters, American soprano
• May 8 – Heather Harper, Irish soprano
• May 10 – Pat Summerall, American football player and broadcaster
• May 15 – Jasper Johns, American painter
• May 19 – Lorraine Hansberry, American playwright (d. 1965)
• May 21 – Malcolm Fraser, twenty-second Prime Minister of Australia
• May 22 – John Barth, American writer
• May 22 – Harvey Milk, American politician and civil rights activist (d. 1978)
• May 31 – Clint Eastwood, American actor, director, and producer
• June 12 – Jim Nabors, American actor, musician, and comedian
• June 17 – Brian Statham, English cricketer (d. 2000)
• June 22 – Yuri Artyukhin, cosmonaut (d. 1998)
• June 27 – Ross Perot, American billionaire and politician
• July 2 – Carlos Menem, President of Argentina
• July 4 – George Steinbrenner, American owner of the New York Yankees
• July 11 – Harold Bloom, American literary critic
• July 25 – Maureen Forrester, Canadian contralto
• August 1 – Pierre Bourdieu, French sociologist
• August 5 – Neil Armstrong, astronaut
• August 12 – George Soros, Hungarian-born American businessman
• August 17 – Ted Hughes, English poet (d. 1998)
• August 21 – Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, sister of Queen Elizabeth II (d. 2002)
• August 25 – Sir Sean Connery, Scottish actor

September-December

• September 3 – Cherry Wilder, New Zealand author (d. 2002)
• September 7 – Baudouin I of Belgium (d. 1993)
• September 25 – Shel Silverstein, American author, poet, and humorist (d. 1999)
• September 26 – Fritz Wunderlich, German tenor (d. 1966)
• September 30 – Ray Charles, American singer and musician (d. 2004)
• October 1 – Sir Richard Harris, Irish actor (d. 2002)
• October 5 – Pavel Popovich, cosmonaut
• October 8 – Toru Takemitsu, Japanese composer (d. 1996)
• October 10 – Harold Pinter, English playwright
• October 11 – Sam Johnson, American politician
• October 28 – Bernie Ecclestone, English auto racing tycoon
• October 30 – Timothy Findley, Canadian author (d. 2002)
• November 14 – Edward White, astronaut (d. 1967)
• November 16 – Chinua Achebe, Nigerian writer
• November 24 – Bob Friend, baseball pitcher
• December 1 – Joachim Hoffmann, German historian (d. 2002)
• December 11 – Jean-Louis Trintignant, French actor
• December 21 – Adebayo Adedeji, Nigerian U.N. official

Deaths

• February 23 – Horst Wessel, Nazi ideologue and composer (b. 1907)
• February 27 – Ahmad Shah Qajar, Persian Shah (b. 1898)
• March 8 – William Howard Taft, President of the United States, Chief Justice of the United States (b. 1857)
• March 19 – Arthur James Balfour, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1848)
• March 24 – Eugeen Van Mieghem, Belgian painter (b. 1875)
• April 2 – Empress Zawditu of Ethiopia (b. 1876)
• April 21 – Robert Bridges, English poet (b. 1844)
• May 13 – Fridtjof Nansen, Norwegian explorer (b. 1861)
• June 5 – Pascin, Bulgarian painter (b. 1885)
• July 7 – Arthur Conan Doyle, British author (b. 1859)
• August 15 – Florian Cajori, Swiss-born historian of mathematics (b. 1859)
• August 29 – William Archibald Spooner, British scholar and Anglican priest (b. 1844)
• September 24 – William A. MacCorkle, Governor of West Virginia (b. 1857)
• October 26 – Harry Payne Whitney, businessman and horse breeder
• November 4 – Buddy Bolden, American jazz musician (b. 1877)
• December 9 – Andrew "Rube" Foster, Negro League baseball player
• December 9 – Laura Muntz Lyall, Canadian painter (b. 1860)
• Jeppe Aakjær, Danish poet and novelist (b. 1866)
• Randall Thomas Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury (b. 1848)

Nobel Prizes

• Physics – Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman
• Chemistry – Hans Fischer
• Medicine – Karl Landsteiner
• Literature – Sinclair Lewis
• Peace – Archbishop Lars Olof Nathan Söderblom

Heads of state in 1930

• Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, King of Italy (1900 – 1946).
• Albert I of Belgium, King of Belgium (1909 – 1934).
• George V of the United Kingdom, King of the United Kingdom, Emperor of India (1910 – 1936).
• Christian X of Denmark, King of Denmark and Iceland (1912 – 1947).
• Miklós Horthy, Regent of Hungary (1920 – 1944).
• Mikhail Kalinin, President of the Soviet Union (1922 – 1946).
• Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, President of Turkey (1923 – 1938).
• Paul von Hindenburg, Reich President of Germany (1925 – 1934).
• Hirohito, (Showa Emperor of Japan) (1926 – 1989).
• Zog of Albania, King of Albania (1928 – 1939).
• Herbert Clark Hoover, President of the United States (1929 – 1933).
• Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia (1930 – 1936, 1941 – 1974).
• Getulio Vargas, President of Brazil (1930 – 1945, 1950 – 1954).