---

Our on this day in history archives contain over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few more of them:

April 30 is the 120th day of the year (121st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 245 days remain until the end of the year.

EVENTS

1492 – Spain gives Christopher Columbus his commission of exploration. He is named admiral of the ocean sea, viceroy and governor of any territory he discovers.

1789 – On the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington takes the oath of office to become the first President of the United States.

1803 – Louisiana Purchase: The United States purchases the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, more than doubling the size of the young nation.

1812 – The Territory of Orleans becomes the 18th U.S. state under the name Louisiana.

1885 – Governor of New York David B. Hill signs legislation creating the Niagara Reservation, New York's first state park, ensuring that Niagara Falls will not be devoted solely to industrial and commercial use.

1897 – J. J. Thomson of the Cavendish Laboratory announces his discovery of the electron as a subatomic particle, over 1,800 times smaller than a proton (in the atomic nucleus), at a lecture at the Royal Institution in London.

1900 – Hawaii becomes a territory of the United States, with Sanford B. Dole as governor.

1905 – Albert Einstein completes his doctoral thesis at the University of Zurich.

1925 – Automaker Dodge Brothers, Inc is sold to Dillon, Read & Co. for US$146 million plus $50 million for charity.

1927 – The Federal Industrial Institute for Women opens in Alderson, West Virginia, as the first women's federal prison in the United States.

1939 – The 1939–40 New York World's Fair opens.

1939 – NBC inaugurates its regularly scheduled television service in New York City, broadcasting President Franklin D. Roosevelt's N.Y. World's Fair opening day ceremonial address.

1947 – In Nevada, Boulder Dam is renamed Hoover Dam.

1956 – Former Vice President and Democratic Senator Alben Barkley dies during a speech in Virginia.

1973 – Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon fires White House Counsel John Dean; other top aides, most notably H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, resign.

2008 – Two skeletal remains found near Yekaterinburg, Russia are confirmed by Russian scientists to be the remains of Alexei and Anastasia, two of the children of the last Tsar of Russia, whose entire family was executed at Yekaterinburg by the Bolsheviks.

2009 – Chrysler files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

---

---