From Historynet: Today in History January 30

1649          Charles I of England  is beheaded at Whitehall by the executioner Richard Brandon .

1844          Richard Theodore Greener  becomes the first African American to graduate from Harvard University.

1862          The USS Monitor is launched at Greenpoint, Long Island.

1901          Women Prohibitionists smash 12 saloons in Kansas.

1912          The British House of Lords opposes the House of Commons by rejecting home rule for Ireland.

1931          The United States awards civil government to the Virgin Islands.

1933          Adolf Hitler  is named Chancellor by President Paul Hindenburg .

1936          Governor Harold Hoffman  orders a new inquiry into the Lindbergh kidnapping.

1943          Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus  surrenders himself and his staff to Red Army troops in Stalingrad.

1945          The Allies launch a drive on the Siegfried line in Germany.

1949          In India, 100,000 people pray at the site of 

Gandhi's  assassination on the first anniversary of his death.

1953          President Dwight Eisenhower  announces that he will pull the Seventh Fleet out of Formosa to permit the Nationalists to attack Communist China.

1964          The Ranger spacecraft, equipped with six TV cameras, is launched to the moon from Cape Canaveral.

1972          British troops shoot dead 14 Irish civilians in Derry, Ireland. The day is forever remembered in Ireland as 'Bloody Sunday.'

1976          The U.S. Supreme Court bans spending limits in campaigns, equating funds with freedom of speech.

1980          The first-ever Chinese Olympic team arrives in New York for the Winter Games at Lake Placid.