On April 30

A crowd crush killed 45 people during the annual pilgrimage to the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in Israel.

A Dutch man drove his car at high speed into a parade in an attempt to kill the Dutch royal family.

The New Yorker published an online article and photographs detailing accounts of torture and abuse by American military personnel of Iraqi prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun whose apparitions of Jesus inspired the Catholic devotion to the Divine Mercy, was canonized by Pope John Paul II.

Riverdance was performed for the first time, as the interval act for the Eurovision Song Contest.

Sixteen monks and a nun of the Hindu organisation Ananda Marga were beaten to death and set on fire in Calcutta, India.

American forces completed a helicopter evacuation (aircraft and evacuees pictured) of U.S. citizens, South Vietnamese civilians and others from Saigon, just before North Vietnamese troops captured the city and ended the Vietnam War.

A refusal by the Bristol Omnibus Company and the Transport and General Workers' Union to permit the employment of black bus crews led to a bus boycott in Bristol, England.

World War II: As Allied forces closed in on Berlin, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler committed suicide in the Führerbunker with Eva Braun one day after their marriage.

Second World War: The Royal Navy submarine HMS Seraph began Operation Mincemeat to deceive Germany about the upcoming invasion of Sicily.

Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford became the first two celebrities to make imprints of their hands and feet in cement (Pickford's pictured) at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California.

The Federal Industrial Institute for Women opened near Alderson, West Virginia, as the first federal prison for women in the United States.

British physicist J. J. Thomson and his team announce the discovery of the electron.

A crowd of workers, unemployed due to the Panic of 1893, concluded the first significant popular protest march on Washington D.C.

New York governor Grover Cleveland signed legislation that led to the creation of Niagara Falls State Park, the United States' first state park.

The United States purchased France's claim to the Louisiana Territory for 80 million francs, or less than US$.03 per acre ($.07/ha).

George Washington took the oath of office as the first president of the United States at Federal Hall in New York City.

SN 1006 (remnant pictured), the brightest supernova in recorded history, first appeared in the constellation Lupus.

The Diocletianic Persecution of Christians officially ended in the eastern Roman Empire.