The new German chancellor Heinrich Brüning openly threatened the Reichstag with dissolution if it failed to carry out his policies. "The cabinet has been formed for the purpose of solving problems of vital importance to the country in the shortest possible time", he told the parliament. "This is our last effort to solve these problems with the present Reichstag."[1]
Almost 100 passengers and crew on the Japanese ferry ship Wakato Maru died when the vessel capsized in a gale off Kyushu. The small ferry was overcrowded beyond its normal capacity.[7]
Thursday, April 3, 1930
The second Academy Awards were held, in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Unlike in the inaugural year, the winners were not announced in advance. For the first time, the ceremony broadcast live on the radio, hosted by Los Angeles station KNX. The Broadway Melody won the award for Outstanding Picture.[8]
Former U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg told a luncheon audience in Chicago that American isolationism was no longer viable. "A great nation like ours, with ten billions a year of foreign commerce, has as much to gain by the establishment of the World Court as any country in the world", he said.[12]
The American Interplanetary Society was founded to conduct rocket experiments. In 1934 the organization changed its name to the American Rocket Society.
The Mahatma Gandhi ended the Salt March, part of the Civil Disobedience Movement at Dandi, Navsari. Here Gandhi broke the law by picking up a few grains of salt from the beach.[16][17]
The Twinkie, a popular snack consisting of a (then banana) cream-filled sponge cake, was created at the Continental Baking Company in the Chicago suburb of River Forest, Illinois.[18]
Born:John Landy, Australian athlete and politician (d. 2022)[34]
Sunday, April 13, 1930
Inspired by Gandhi's Salt March, 500,000 people in British India held an orderly demonstration in Bombay, defying the colonial law against private gathering of salt and throwing a monstrous effigy, representing the salt tax, into the Indian Ocean.[35]
Monday, April 14, 1930
Indian independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru was arrested and charged with violating the salt law.[36]
Britain and the Soviet Union signed a new trade pact granting each other most favoured nation status.[43]
First Lady Lou Henry Hoover suffered a back injury in a fall at the White House.[44] The injury was serious enough to require her to use a wheelchair during her recovery.[45]
Wilhelm Frick of the Nazi Party, the Interior Minister of the German state of Thuringia, introduced nationalistic new prayers to be recited in elementary schools. Liberals objected to the propagandistic content of the prayers and challenged their constitutionality in court.[46] One line read, "I believe that thou wilt punish the betrayal of Germany and bless the actions of those who seek to free the Fatherland."[47]
Twenty-seven Indian independence demonstrators were sentenced for breaking the salt laws, including Mahatma Gandhi's son Devdas, who received three months imprisonment. Mahatma Gandhi urged his followers to continue nonviolent forms of protest, saying that riots like the one in Calcutta "will harm our struggle."[49]
The BBC Radio news bulletin from London stated: "Good evening. Today is Good Friday. There is no news." Piano music followed for roughly 15 minutes.[50][51][52]
A typhoon swept through Leyte in the Philippines, causing extensive damage.[53]
The Chittagong armoury raid occurred when Indian revolutionaries led by Surya Sen raided an armoury in the Bengal province of British India, seizing it and setting it on fire. Martial law was proclaimed and troops were called out to quell the uprising.[54][55]
A fire killed 118 people at a wooden church in the small Romanian town of Costești, most of them schoolchildren, after starting during Good Friday services. Candles being used in the service brushed against drapery and set it ablaze.[56]
Saturday, April 19, 1930
Three people were killed and 36 injured in fighting between police and protestors in Warsaw, Poland when 2,000 unemployed textile workers surrounded city hall and threw stones at the building while demanding assistance.[57]
In the U.S., the Presbyterian General Assembly publicized the findings of a commission appointed to investigate marriage and divorce in America. One section of the study blamed rising divorce rates on cultural tendencies such as jazz due to its "primeval jungle tom tom" which "inspires contortions of dance unfitting to incipient rheumatics", as well as stage plays and films in which adultery was "the fashionable theme".[66]
The London Naval Treaty was signed by representatives of the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Italy and the United States, limiting the tonnage of warships until 1936. France and Italy were exempted from the section that set limitations on total tonnage, but it was hoped that they would sign on to the full treaty at a later date.[69]
Sixty-four British and Indian troops were killed in a battle to capture a group of revolutionaries who had participated in the Chittagong raid, while only 11 of the rebels died. The fight began after a group of 57 outlaws were surrounded at the Jalalabad mountain range by British Indian forces.[70]
For the first time in history, an international radiotelephone call was made from a speeding train. Canadian National Railway President Sir Henry Worth Thornton phoned the U.S. commerce secretary Robert P. Lamont in Washington, then his Canadian counterpart James Malcolm, and finally made a call to the vice president of the company in London during the inauguration of a new train service from Montreal to Chicago.[81]
Nine spectators were killed and 20 injured at an air show in the U.S. at Fayetteville, Tennessee, after a plane crashed onto a railroad embankment and veered into the crowd. The pilot, Milton P. Covert, survived.[82][83]
Monday, April 28, 1930
The Turkestan–Siberia Railway opened, connecting the cities of Arys and Novosibirsk. Construction of the remainder of the line would continue nine more months until January. When finished, the four-year project had cost over 161 million rubles.[84][85]
The Independence, Kansas, baseball team of the Class C Western Association hosted the first regular season night game in organized baseball history. The visiting Muskogee Chiefs beat the Independence Producers under the lights by a score of 13–3 before a crowd of 1,000.[86][87]
A solar eclipse occurred on this day, with the path of totality passing through the northwestern United States and across central and eastern Canada.[88]
Born:James Baker, U.S. Secretary of State, 1989 to 1992; former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and White House Chief of Staff; in Houston, Texas.[89]
Film producer and executive David O. Selznick married socialite Irene Mayer (daughter of film producer Louis B. Mayer) in a simple ceremony at Mayer's house in Hollywood, United States.[91]
Italy decreed that its naval construction program for the next year would consist of 29 new ships totalling 42,900 tons, an increase of 12,000 tons over the previous year.[93]
^Lawers, Gracienne. "The Use of Language in Education in Belgium." Language Rights Revisited – The Challenge of Global Migration and Communication. Ed. Dagmar Richter, Ingo Richter, Reetta Toivanen, Iryna Ulasiuk. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2012. p. 260. ISBN978-3-8305-2809-8
^Holston, Kim R. (2013). Movie Roadshows: A History and Filmography of Reserved-Seat Limited Showings, 1911–1973. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. p. 69. ISBN978-0-7864-6062-5.