Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 October 30

From today's featured article

Jack Parsons (1914–1952) was an American rocket engineer and rocket propulsion researcher, chemist, and Thelemite occultist. Associated with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Parsons was one of the principal founders of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation. He invented the first rocket engine using a castable composite rocket propellant, and helped develop both liquid-fuel and solid-fuel rockets. Inspired by science fiction literature, he developed an interest in rocketry in his childhood and in 1928 began amateur rocket experiments with school friend Ed Forman. In 1934 he united with Forman and graduate student Frank Malina to form the Caltech-affiliated GALCIT Rocket Research Group, supported by Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory chairman Theodore von Kármán. After working on Jet-Assisted Take Off for the U.S. military, the GALCIT Group became JPL in 1943. For his contributions to rocket engineering, his advocacy of space exploration and human spaceflight, and his role in the founding of JPL and Aerojet, Parsons is regarded as one of the most important early figures of the U.S. space program. (Full article...)

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In baseball, the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters defeat the Hiroshima Toyo Carp to win the Japan Series.
Yazidi human rights activists Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar win the Sakharov Prize.
More than 60 people are killed in an attack on a police training centre in Quetta, Pakistan.
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October 30: Diwali (Hinduism, Sikhism and Jainism, 2016); Mischief Night in some areas of the United States

Henry VII of England

1485 – Having seized the throne of England after the War of the Roses, Henry VII (pictured) was formally crowned at Westminster Abbey.
1806 – War of the Fourth Coalition: Believing they were massively outnumbered, the 5,300-man German garrison at Stettin, Prussia (now Szczecin, Poland), surrendered to a much smaller French force without a fight.
1905 – Russian Revolution: Tsar Nicholas II reluctantly signed the "October Manifesto", establishing the State Duma as the elected legislature in Imperial Russia.
1960 – Surgeon and scientist Michael Woodruff performed the first successful kidney transplant in the United Kingdom at The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.
1991 – The Madrid Conference, an attempt by the international community to start a peace process through negotiations involving Israel and the Arab countries, convened in Madrid.

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