On April 30, 1975, the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to Communist forces. (Go to article.)

1789 George Washington took office in New York as the first president of the United States.

1803 The United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France.

1812 Louisiana became the 18th state.

1900 Hawaii was organized as a U.S. territory.

1900 Train engineer John Luther “Casey” Jones of the Illinois Central Railroad died in a wreck near Vaughan, Miss., after staying at the controls in an effort to save the passengers. (The event was immortalized in song.)

1939 The New York World’s Fair, billed as a look at “the world of tomorrow,” opened.

1945 Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler committed suicide along with his wife of one day, Eva Braun, as Russian troops approached his Berlin bunker.

1970 President Richard Nixon announced the United States was sending troops into Cambodia.

1975 The South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to Communist forces.

1993 Top-ranked women’s tennis player Monica Seles was stabbed in the back by a man who ran onto the court during a match in Hamburg, Germany.

1997 ABC aired the “coming out” episode of the sitcom “Ellen,” in which the title character, played by Ellen DeGeneres, admitted she is a lesbian.

2001 Chandra Levy, a federal government intern, went missing. Her remains were found more than a year later in a Washington, D.C., park.

2003 Mahmoud Abbas took office as the first Palestinian prime minister. International mediators presented Israeli and Palestinian leaders with a “road map” to peace.

2003 The U.S. Navy withdrew from its disputed Vieques bombing range in Puerto Rico.

2004 Michael Jackson pleaded not guilty in Santa Maria, Calif., to a grand jury indictment that expanded the child molestation case against him. (He was later acquited.)

2004 Former NBA star Jayson Williams was acquitted of aggravated manslaughter in the shotgun slaying of a limousine driver at his New Jersey mansion, but found guilty of trying to cover up the shooting.

2005 Missing Georgia woman Jennifer Wilbanks turned up in Albuquerque, N.M., originally claiming to have been abducted but then admitting she was a “runaway bride.”

Source: NY Times