Today in History in 1955 James Dean dies in a car crash; in 1960 the last episode of The Howdy Doody Show airs and the first episode of The Flintstones is shown on television; and in 1982 the TV sitcom Cheers premieres.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

September 30 is the 273rd day of the year (274th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 92 days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

489 – Battle of Verona: The Ostrogoths under King Theoderic the Great defeat the forces of Odoacer for the second time in Verona, present-day Northern Italy.

1061 – Pope Alexander II is elected.

1399 – Henry IV is proclaimed King o0f England.

1512 – A rock avalanche buries most of the town of Biasca in Ticino, in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. Hundreds of people are killed.

1744 – France and Spain defeat the Kingdom of Sardinia at the Battle of Madonna dell'Olmo.

1791 – First performance of The Magic Flute: This is the last opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to have its premiere.

1791 – The National Constituent Assembly in Paris is dissolved; Parisians hail Maximilien Robespierre and Jerome Petion as 'incorruptible patriots'.

1813 – Battle of Bárbula: Simón Bolívar defeats Santiago Bobadilla.

1860 – The UK's first tram service begins in Birkenhead, Merseyside.

1867 – The US takes control of the Midway Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

1882 – The world's first commercial hydroelectric power plant (later known as Appleton Edison Light Company) begins operation on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States.

1885 – Bechuanaland, in present-day Botswana, becomes a British Protectorate.

1888 – Jack the Ripper kills his third and fourth victims, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes.

1895 – Madagascar becomes a French protectorate.

1906 – Real Academia Galega, Galician language biggest linguistic authority starts working in Havana.

1907 – Opening of the McKinley National Memorial in Canton, Ohio. It is the final resting place of US President William McKinley and his family.

1911 – The dam of the Austin Reservoir in Pennsylvania bursts, killing 78 people.

1915 – A Serbian army private becomes the first soldier in history to shoot down an enemy aircraft with ground-to-air fire.

1927 – Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 60 home runs in a single season.

1935 – The Hoover Dam, astride the border between the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada, is dedicated.

1935 – "The Adventures of Dick Tracy" is first heard on the Mutual Radio Network.

1938 – The Munich Pact is signed.

1938 – The League of Nations unanimously outlaws "intentional bombings of civilian populations".

1939 – General Władysław Sikorski becomes commander-in-chief of the Polish Government in exile.

1941 – Holocaust: The Nazis complete the Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine, in which thousands of people are killed.

1945 – The Bourne End rail crash in Hertfordshire, England, kills 43 people.

1947 – The Islamic Republic of Pakistan joined the United Nations.

1947 – Baseball: The World Series, featuring New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, is televised for the first time.

1949 – The Berlin Airlift ends.

1950 – Korean War: South Korean troops cross the 38th Parallel for the first time.

1951 – 2000

1953 – On board the bathyscaphe Trieste, Auguste Piccard and Jacques Piccard travel to a depth 3,150 meters below the surface of the sea, which at that time had been the deepest point anyone had travelled.

1954 – The U.S. Navy submarine USS Nautilus is commissioned as the world's first nuclear reactor powered vessel.

1955 – James Dean dies in a car crash.

1960 – The last episode of The Howdy Doody Show airs on NBC.

1960 – The first episode of The Flintstones is shown on television.

1962 – Mexican-American labor leader César Chávez founds the United Farm Workers.

1962 – James Meredith enters the University of Mississippi, defying segregation.

1962 – Last episodes of Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar broadcast on CBS Radio, marking the end of The Golden Age of Radio.

1965 – Civil unrest follows a failed coup attempt by Indonesia Communist Party (PKI). More than a million people died.

1966 – The British protectorate of Bechuanaland declares its independence, and becomes the Republic of Botswana. Seretse Khama takes office as the first President.

1967 – BBC Radio 1 is launched; the BBC's other national radio stations also adopt numeric names. Tony Blackburn presents the first show.

1967 – Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation is launched in Colombo; the station was formerly known as Radio Ceylon.

1968 – The Boeing 747 is rolled out and shown to the public for the first time.

1970 – Jordan makes a deal with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine for the release of the remaining hostages from the Dawson's Field hijackings.

1972 – Baseball: Roberto Clemente has the 3,000th hit of his career.

1975 – The Hughes (later McDonnell-Douglas, now Boeing) AH-64 Apache makes its first flight.

1976 – Muhammad Ali defends his Heavyweight Boxing Title, against Ken Norton.

1979 – Niki Lauda retires from Formula One racing.

1980 – Ethernet specifications published by Xerox working with Intel and Digital Equipment Corporation.

1982 – Cyanide-laced Tylenol kills six people in the Chicago area. Seven were killed in all. The incident is known as the Tylenol scare.

1982 – The TV sitcom Cheers premieres.

1986 – Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed Israel's covert nuclear programme to British media, is kidnapped in Rome by the Israeli Mossad.

1989 – Foreign Minister of West Germany Hans-Dietrich Genscher's speech from the balcony of the German embassy in Prague.

1991 – President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti is forced from office.

1993 – An earthquake hits India's Latur and Osmanabad district of Marathwada (Aurangabad division) in Maharashtra state leaving tens of thousands of people dead and many more homeless.

1997 – Origin Systems Inc. releases Ultima Online, a massively multiplayer game, opening the door for a new video gaming genre.

1999 – Japan's then-worst nuclear accident occurs at a uranium reprocessing facility in Tokai-mura, northeast of Tokyo. Workers overload a container with uranium, exposing workers and local residents to very high radiation levels.

2004 – AIM-54 Phoenix which became the primary missile for the Northrop Grumman F-14 Tomcat retired from U.S. Navy.

2004 – The first images of a live giant squid in its natural habitat is taken 600 miles south of Tokyo.

2005 – The Parliament of Catalonia passes with 120 plus votes and 15 against, the Project of New Catalan Statute of Autonomy, proclaiming in its article 1, "Catalonia is a nation".

2005 – The controversial drawings of Muhammad are printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

2009 – A magnitude 7.6 earthquake strikes western Sumatra, killing over 1,000 people.

2010 – In Ecuador, police officers, supported by parts of the army, attempt a failed coup against President Rafael Correa.

2012 – British entertainer Jimmy Savile, who had died in October 2011, is revealed to have carried out sexual abuses over a period of decades.

2012 – Europe wins the Ryder Cup golf tournament, with a comeback against the United States from 10-6 behind to win 14.5 to 13.5.

2013 – Pope Francis announces that Pope John Paul II is to become a saint in April 2014, nine years after his death.

2022 - Vladimir Putin pronounces the Annexation of Southern and Eastern Ukraine.