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Today is Thursday, July 30, the 211th day of 2026. There are 154 days left in the year.
On July 30, 2012, three electric grids in India collapsed in a cascade, cutting power to 620 million people in the world’s biggest blackout.
In 1619, the first representative assembly in colonial America convened in Jamestown in the Virginia Colony.
In 1864, during the Civil War, Union forces tried to take Petersburg, Virginia, by exploding a gunpowder-laden mine shaft beneath Confederate defense lines; the attack failed.
In 1916, German saboteurs blew up a munitions plant on Black Tom, an island near Jersey City, New Jersey, killing about a dozen people.
In 1930, Uruguay won the first FIFA World Cup, defeating Argentina 4-2.
In 1945, the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis, having just delivered components of the atomic bomb to Tinian in the Mariana Islands during World War II, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine; only 316 out of nearly 1,200 service members survived.
In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a measure making “In God We Trust” the national motto, replacing “E Pluribus Unum.”
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Social Security Amendments of 1965, which led to the creation of Medicare and Medicaid.
In 1976, Bruce Jenner, now known as Caitlyn Jenner, set a world record of 8,618 points and won the gold medal in the Olympic decathlon at the Montreal Summer Games.
In 2008, ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic (RA’-doh-van KA’-ra-jich) was extradited to The Hague to face genocide charges after nearly 13 years on the run. (He was sentenced by a U.N. court in 2019 to life imprisonment after being convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.)
In 2013, U.S. Army Pfc. Chelsea Manning was acquitted of aiding the enemy — the most serious charge she faced — but was convicted of espionage, theft and other charges at Fort Meade, Maryland, more than three years after she’d spilled secrets to WikiLeaks. (The former intelligence analyst was later sentenced to up to 35 years in prison, but the sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama.)
In 2016, 16 people died when a hot-air balloon caught fire and exploded after hitting high-tension power lines before crashing into a pasture near Lockhart, Texas, northeast of San Antonio.
In 2020, NASA launched its Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter to Mars aboard an Atlas V rocket; the helicopter’s initial flight on Mars was in April 2021.
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