August 30 is the 242nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (243rd in leap years), with 123 days remaining.

Events

• 711 - K'inich K'an Joy Chitam, king of Palenque, disappears from history. He was probably taken prisoner by a rivalling city state.
• 1574 - Guru Ram Das became the Fourth Sikh Guru/Master
• 1590 - Tokugawa Ieyasu enters Edo Castle. (Traditional Japanese date: August 1, 1590)
• 1813 - Battle of Kulm - French forces defeated by Austrian-Prussian-Russian alliance
• 1813 - Creek War: Creek Red Sticks carried out the Fort Mims Massacre.
• 1850 - Honolulu, Hawaii becomes a city
• 1862 - Battle of Richmond, Kentucky - Confederates under Edmund Kirby Smith rout a Union army under General Horatio Wright
• 1862 - Union forces defeated in Second Battle of Bull Run
• 1909 - Burgess Shale fossils discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott
• 1914 - Battle of Tannenberg
• 1918 - Fanya Kaplan, an assassin, shot and seriously injured Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. This, along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompted the decree for Red Terror.
• 1922 - Battle of Dumlupinar, final battle in Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) ("Turkish War of Independence")
• 1941 - Siege of Leningrad begins
• 1942 - World War II: Battle of Alam Halfa began
• 1945 - Hong Kong is liberated from Japan by British Forces
• 1945 - Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Douglas MacArthur lands at Atsugi Air Force Base.
• 1962 - Japan conducts a test of the NAMC YS-11, its first aircraft since the war and its only successful commercial aircraft from before or after the war.
• 1963 - Hotline between U.S. and Soviet leaders goes into operation
• 1965 - Casey Stengel announces his retirement from baseball
• 1965 - Rock musician Bob Dylan releases his influencial album Highway 61 Revisited featuring the song "Like a Rolling Stone."
• 1967 - Thurgood Marshall confirmed as the first African American Justice of the United States Supreme Court
• 1976 - Tom Brokaw becomes news anchor of the Today Show
• 1990 - Tatarstan declares independence from the RSFSR
• 1991 - Azerbaijan declares independence from the USSR
• 1992 - Michael Schumacher wins his first Formula One race at the Belgian Grand Prix.
• 1993 - The Late Show with David Letterman debuts on CBS.
• 1999 - East Timorese vote for independence in a referendum.
• 2002 - The Tandy Center Subway in Fort Worth, Texas ceases to operate.

Births

• 1334 - King Peter I of Castile (d. 1369)
• 1748 - Jacques-Louis David, French painter (d. 1825)
• 1797 - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, English writer (d. 1851)
• 1839 - Gulstan Ropert, French Catholic prelate (d. 1903)
• 1852 - Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Dutch chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1911)
• 1871 - Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, New Zealand physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (d. 1937)
• 1884 - Theodor Svedberg, Swedish chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1971)
• 1893 - Huey Long, American politician (d. 1935)
• 1896 - Raymond Massey, Canadian actor (d. 1983)
• 1898 - Shirley Booth, American actress (d. 1992)
• 1901 - Roy Wilkins, American civil rights leader (1981)
• 1906 - Joan Blondell, American actress (d. 1979)
• 1908 - Fred MacMurray, American actor (d. 1991)
• 1912 - Edward Mills Purcell, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1997)
• 1918 - Ted Williams, baseball player (d. 2002)
• 1919 - Kitty Wells, American singer
• 1922 - Lionel Murphy, Australian politician and judge
• 1925 - Laurent de Brunhoff, French writer and illustrator
• 1927 - Geoffrey Beene, American fashion designer
• 1930 - Warren Buffett, American entrepreneur
• 1930 - Jerry Tarkanian, American basketball coach
• 1935 - John Phillips, American singer (The Mamas and the Papas) (d. 2001)
• 1939 - John Peel, English radio disc jockey (d. 2004)
• 1941 - Ben Jones, American actor and politician
• 1943 - Jean-Claude Killy, French skier
• 1943 - R. Crumb, American cartoonist
• 1944 - Molly Ivins, American political humorist
• 1947 - Peggy Lipton, American actress
• 1948 - Lewis Black, American comedian
• 1951 - Timothy Bottoms, American actor
• 1951 - Dana (singer), Irish singer and politician
• 1954 - Alexander Lukashenko, President of Belarus
• 1959 - Mark 'Jacko' Jackson, Australian footballer and actor
• 1963 - Paul Oakenfold, British disc jockey
• 1972 - Cameron Diaz, American actress
• 1972 - Pavel Nedved, Czech footballer
• 1974 - Aaron Barrett, American guitarist and singer (Reel Big Fish)
• 1982 - Andy Roddick, American tennis player

Deaths

• 1158 - King Sancho III of Castile (b. 1134)
• 1428 - Emperor Shoko of Japan (b. 1401)
• 1483 - King Louis XI of France (b. 1423)
• 1619 - Shimazu Yoshihiro, Japanese samurai and warlord (b. 1535)
• 1751 - Christopher Polhem, Swedish scientist and inventor (b. 1661)
• 1856 - Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, English writer (b. 1811)
• 1879 - John Bell Hood, American Confederate general (b. 1831)
• 1907 - Richard Mansfield, American actor and manager (b. 1857)
• 1928 - Wilhelm Wien, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1864)
• 1935 - Henri Barbusse, French novelist and journalist (b. 1873)
• 1940 - J.J. Thomson, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1856)
• 1943 - Father Eustaquio van Lieshout, Dutch Catholic priest (b. 1890)
• 1961 - Charles Coburn, American actor (b. 1877)
• 1981 - Vera-Ellen, American actress (b. 1921)
• 1985 - Taylor Caldwell, English-born author (b. 1900)
• 1991 - Jean Tinguely, Swiss painter and sculptor (b. 1925)
• 1994 - Lindsay Anderson, English film director (b. 1923)
• 2003 - Charles Bronson, American actor (b. 1921)
• 2003 - Donald Davidson, American philosopher (b. 1917)
• 2004 - Fred Lawrence Whipple, American astronomer (b. 1906)

Holidays and observances

• Victory Day in Turkey (to commemorate the Battle of Dumlupinar in 1922)
• Saint Rose of Lima's Day in Peru