THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― AUGUST 30

August 30 is the 242nd day of the year (243rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 123 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Friday or Saturday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Monday or Wednesday (56).

NATIONAL TOASTED MARSHMALLOW DAY  

1363 – Beginning date of the Battle of Lake Poyang; the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders — Chen Youliang and Zhu Yuanzhang — are pitted against each other in what is one of the largest naval battles in history, during the last decade of the ailing,Mongol-led Yuan dynasty.

1799 – The entire Dutch fleet is captured by British forces under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Sir Charles Mitchell during the War of the Second Coalition.

1813 – Creek War: Fort Mims massacre — Creek "Red Sticks" kill over 500 settlers (including over 250 armed militia) in Fort Mims, north of Mobile, Alabama.

1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Richmond — Confederates under Edmund Kirby Smith rout Union forces under General Horatio Wright.

1918 – Fanni Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. This, along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror.

1945 – Hong Kong is liberated from Japan by British Armed Forces.

1967 – Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African American Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

1974 – A powerful bomb explodes at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters in Marunouchi, Tokyo, Japan. Eight are killed, 378 are injured. Eight left-wing activists are arrested on May 19, 1975 by Japanese authorities.

1991 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union: Azerbaijan declares independence from Soviet Union.

1995 – Bosnian War: NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces.

1998 – The Second Congo War: Armed forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and their Angolan and Zimbabwean allies recapture Matadi and the Inga dams in the western DRC from RCD and Rwandan troops.

2003 – While being towed across the Barents Sea, the de-commissioned Russian submarine K-159 sinks, taking nine of her crew and 800 kg of spent nuclear fuel with her.

2014 – Prime Minister of Lesotho, Tom Thabane, flees to South Africa as the army allegedly stages a coup.

TODAY'S BIRTHS

1893 – Huey Long, American lawyer and politician, 40th Governor of Louisiana (d. 1935)

1912 – Edward Mills Purcell, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1997)

1930 – Warren Buffett, American businessman and philanthropist

From Wikipedia and Google, except as noted.