Today is Wednesday, Oct. 30, the 304th day of 2024. There are 62 days left in the year.
►Birthdays: Author Robert Caro is 89. Football Hall of Fame coach Dick Vermeil is 88. Jefferson Airplane/Starship singer Grace Slick is 85. Songwriter Eddie Holland is 85. R&B singer Otis Williams of the Temptations is 83. Actor Henry Winkler is 79. Broadcast journalist Andrea Mitchell is 78. Country/rock musician Timothy B. Schmit of the Eagles is 77. Actor Harry Hamlin is 73. Actor Kevin Pollak is 67. Actor Michael Beach is 61. Actor Matthew Morrison is 46. Business executive and former presidential adviser Ivanka Trump is 43.
In 1912, Vice President James S. Sherman, running for a second term of office with President William Howard Taft, died six days before Election Day.
In 1938, the radio play “The War of the Worlds,’’ starring Orson Welles, aired on the CBS Radio Network.
In 1961, the Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb, the “Tsar Bomba,’’ with a force estimated at about 50 megatons (over 3,500 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima).
In 1974, Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of a scheduled 15-round bout known as the “Rumble in the Jungle,’’ in Kinshasa, Congo (then Zaire), to regain his world heavyweight title.
In 1975, the New York Daily News ran the headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead’’ a day after President Ford said he would veto any proposed federal bailout of New York City.
►In 1991, a nor’easter, which would build into a rare late-season hurricane, pummeled the Northeast and Canadian maritimes. Called then the No-name storm or Halloween storm, it would become known as the Perfect storm, with waves approaching 100 feet off Nova Scotia, tidal flooding, and winds raking coastal properties. At least 13 people were killed, including the crew of six on the Gloucester-based fishing boat Andrea Gail, and about 100 homes were destroyed or severely damaged in Massachusetts.
In 1995, by a razor-thin vote of 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent, Federalists prevailed over separatists in a Quebec secession referendum.
►In 1997, a jury in Cambridge convicted British au pair Louise Woodward of second-degree murder in the death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen. (The judge, Hiller B. Zobel, later reduced the verdict to manslaughter and set Woodward free.)
rst World Series title in 86 years.
In 2018, notorious gangster James “Whitey’’ Bulger was found beaten to death at a federal prison in West Virginia; the 89-year-old former Boston crime boss and longtime FBI informant had been transferred there just hours earlier.
