Aug. 30
Today in history
Today is Aug. 30. On this date in:
1800: In the first major rebellion of enslaved people in the United States, Gabriel, an enslaved blacksmith, gathered an army of about 1,000 outside Richmond, Virginia. The plan was thwarted by heavy rain that delayed the meeting. Gabriel and 25 others were hanged; two enslaved people who told their enslavers about the plot were freed.
1890: President Benjamin Harrison signed the Second Morrill Act, requiring states to either establish and fund land-grant universities for people of color or show that their existing land-grant universities were not only for White people. The goal was to ensure that Black people and historically Black colleges and universities could conduct research and host
extension services for their communities.
1890: President Benjamin Harrison signed the first U.S. law requiring federal inspection of meat. It required the Department of Agriculture to inspect imported cattle and exported salt pork and bacon. The law came in response to several European countries that had banned U.S. pork imports due to trichinosis.
1918: Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin was shot twice in an assassination attempt in Moscow by Fanya Kaplan of the Social Revolutionary party. Lenin survived; Kaplan did not, being shot four days later. In response, the Bolsheviks took actions against their political opponents, executing thousands of people.
1963: The White House/Kremlin “Hot Line” communications link went into service to allow direct messaging between the U.S. and Soviet governments in case of crisis. Contrary to the popular image of the “red telephone,” it was not a phone but a telegraph.
1966: Congress confirmed Constance Baker Motley as a U.S. district judge, the first Black woman on the federal bench. She was already the first Black woman to argue cases before the Supreme Court – winning James Meredith the right to attend the University of Mississippi – among other firsts. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson acknowledged Motley when she was nominated to the Supreme Court.
1967: The Senate confirmed Thurgood Marshall as the first Black Supreme Court justice, 69-11, after six hours of debate. The famed civil rights litigator had won most of the cases he argued before the high court, most notably Brown v. Board of Education.
1983: Guion S. Bluford Jr. became the first Black American astronaut to enter space. An aerospace engineer and Air Force pilot who flew 144 combat missions in the Vietnam War, he took three more trips into space.
2001: The International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague told Slobodan Milošević that he would be charged with genocide in Bosnia and Croatia. He was the first former head of state to be prosecuted by an international war crimes tribunal. The former Yugoslav president was unrepentant and died while his trial was still underway.
2021: The last U.S. troops left Afghanistan, ending a 20-year mission with the Taliban back in power. The withdrawal was chaotic and widely criticized.
– USA TODAY Network
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Today in history, August 30
