Today is Friday, October 30, the 303rd day of 2009. There are 62 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1270 - The eighth and last Crusade is launched.

1697 - France signs the Peace of Ryswick, ending the War of the Grand Alliance between France on one side and England, the Netherlands, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire on the other.

1817 - Simon Bolivar organizes independent government in Venezuela.

1888 - In London, Jack the Ripper murders his last victim.

1918 - Czechoslovakia is proclaimed an independent republic.

1928 - Experimental transmission of still photographs by television begins in Britain.

1930 - Treaty of friendship between Greece and Turkey is signed in Ankara.

1938 - The U.S. radio play, "The War of the Worlds," starring Orson Welles, airs on CBS. The live drama, which employed fake news reports, panicked listeners who thought its portrayal of a Martian invasion was true.

1945 - The U.S. government announces the end of shoe rationing.

1953 - U.S. General George C. Marshall is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1956 - Britain and France issue an ultimatum to Egypt and Israel calling for a cease-fire.

1961 - The Soviet Union tests a hydrogen bomb with a force estimated at 58 megatons, an action condemned throughout the world; the Soviet Party Congress unanimously approves a resolution ordering the removal of Josef Stalin's body from Lenin's tomb.

1963 - Algeria and Morocco sign a peace agreement in a border dispute.

1965 - Military activity by the Indonesian Communist party forces in Central Java intensify and assume aspects of a full-fledged revolt.

1974 - Muhammad Ali knocks out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15-round bout in Kinshasa, Zaire, to regain his world heavyweight title.

1978 - U.S. President Jimmy Carter signs a law allowing the deportation of all naturalized U.S. citizens who had engaged in Nazi atrocities.

1983 - A powerful earthquake hits eastern Turkey killing over 1,300 people in Erzurum and Kars provinces.

1989 - Riot police in Moscow repeatedly charge and club demonstrators following a candlelight vigil outside KGB headquarters in memory of Stalin's victims.

1991 - U.S. intelligence assessments cite that China is providing Iran with the equipment and technology to develop nuclear weapons.

1992 - Heavy fighting breaks out in Luanda, the capital of Angola, between the government and the Union for the Total Independence of Angola or UNITA. The conflict rages for three days, claiming at least 1,000 lives, until both sides establish a truce November 1.

1993 - Two gunmen open fire in a village pub in Northern Ireland, killing seven.

1994 - Gerry Adams, leader of Irish Republican Army's political ally Sinn Fein, says that he is willing to accept a compromise that falls short of uniting Northern Ireland with the republic.

1995 - Quebec votes against separation from Canada by 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent.

1997 - Sri Lanka's air force begins recruiting women to train as pilots for cockpits left vacant by the deaths of airmen in the country's 14-year civil war.

1998 - While cracking down on the militant Hamas movement, the Palestinian Authority cabinet ratifies the land-for-peace accord; in Nicaragua, a mudslide caused by Hurricane Mitch kills at least 2,000 people on the slopes of the Casitas volcano in Posoltega.

1999 - The last Indonesian troop ship sails out of East Timor, ending a bloody 24-year military engagement in the now independent nation. Some 200,000 East Timorese and 5,000 Indonesian troops have perished since the Indonesian invasion of the former Portuguese colony on Dec. 7, 1975.

2000 - A Supreme Court judge, his bodyguard and chauffeur are killed and 35 others injured in Southern Spain, by a suspected Basque separatist car bomb.

2002 - The Irish Republican Army breaks off negotiations with an independent disarmament commission over talks on scrapping weapons — a key goal of Northern Ireland's 4-year-old peace accord.

2004 - Ukrainians vote in a presidential election closely watched by the West for signs of whether the former Soviet republic is committed to democracy and whether the country that sprawls between Russia and NATO's eastern flank will tilt toward the Kremlin.

2005 - A group with possible ties to Kashmir's most feared militants claims responsibility for a series of terrorist bombings that killed 59 people in New Delhi. The attacks came as India and Pakistan negotiate the opening of a heavily militarized frontier area in order to speed earthquake relief efforts.

2006 - Two truck bombs explode minutes apart at two police stations outside Algieria's capital, killing three people and injuring 24 others.

2007- Six French charity workers have been charged with kidnapping after a failed attempt to leave Chad with 103 children an aid group said are orphans from Sudan's Darfur region, Chadian authorities say.

2008 - A U.S. federal jury convicts Charles McArthur Emmanuel, the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, in the first case brought under a 1994 U.S. law allowing prosecution for torture and atrocities committed overseas.

Today's Birthdays:

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Irish author-politician (1741-1816); Feodor Dostoyevsky, Russian novelist (1821-1881); Ezra Pound, U.S. poet (1885-1972); Louis Malle, French film director (1932-1995); Henry Winkler, U.S. actor (1945--); Diego Maradona, Argentine soccer star (1960--).

Thought for Today:

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood — Marie Curie, Polish Nobel Prize-winning chemist (1867-1934).

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.