August 30
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2023
2023: The mystery of the golden blob begins
On this day, scientists exploring nearly two miles beneath the Gulf of Alaska spotted something strange: a shiny, four-inch golden blob stuck to a rock. Naturally, they poked it—and then brought it aboard. More than two years of study finally revealed its identity: the base of a giant deep-sea tube anemone (Relicanthus daphneae), a species known to science since the 1970s.
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© NOAA Fisheries; Photo Illustration Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Featured Event
NASA
U.S. astronaut Guion S. Bluford, Jr., became on this day in 1983 the first African American to travel into space, serving as a mission specialist aboard the shuttle orbiter Challenger, and later flew on three other missions. [Take our quiz about famous astronauts and cosmonauts.]
Featured Biography
Featured Biography
© AISA—Everett/Shutterstock.com
After so much time spent in painful labour, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires, was the most gratifying consummation of my toils. But this discovery was so great and so overwhelming, that all the steps by which I had been progressively led to it were obliterated, and I beheld only the result.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, born this day in 1797, was the English Romantic novelist best known as the author of Frankenstein (1818), which recounts the consequences that arise after a scientist builds a human being.
Famous Birthdays
More on August 30
Sydney Rohde (Rocz)/NASA
2026
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. [How will the Roman Space Telescope help astronomers answer questions about dark energy and dark matter?]
Sgt. Daniel Love/U.S. Department of Defense
2021
Following a chaotic withdrawal, the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan, some seven years after the war in that country had officially ended. [Test your knowledge of the history of war.]
Brad Barket/Getty Images
2015
British neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, who won acclaim for his sympathetic case histories of patients with unusual neurological disorders, died in New York, New York, at age 82. [Take our quiz about diseases and disorders.]
© 1974 Paramount Pictures, all rights reserved
2003
American actor Charles Bronson—who was best known for his portrayal of tough guys, notably an architect turned vigilante in Death Wish (1974)—died in Los Angeles at age 81. [Test your knowledge of movies.]
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1999
Despite violence and intimidation, nearly all registered voters in East Timor took part in a United Nations-organized referendum that set the territory on the path to independence after decades of Indonesian occupation.
Official White House photo by Pete Souza
1993
Late Show with David Letterman—which offered an innovative and frequently off-the-wall approach to the talk show format—debuted on CBS; Letterman’s previous show, Late Night with David Letterman (1982–93), had aired on NBC. [Sort fact from fiction in our pop culture quiz.]
Bernard Gotfryd Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. LC-DIG-gtfy-03182)
1981
Iranian president Mohammad Ali Rajaʾi and prime minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar were assassinated by antigovernment forces; bombing came during a turbulent period following the Iranian Revolution and amid the Iran-Iraq War.
Tass/Sovfoto
1918
Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin was shot twice in an unsuccessful assassination attempt. [Take our quiz about Russian history.]
Pictorial Parade
1905
American baseball player Ty Cobb, who became one of the game’s greatest offensive players and one of its fiercest competitors, made his major league debut, with the Detroit Tigers. [How much do you know about baseball?]
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1862
During the American Civil War, the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas) ended with a decisive Confederate victory. [Test your knowledge of the American Civil War.]
Bettmann/Getty Images
1813
During the Creek War, some 250 frontiersmen were killed by the Red Sticks, a Native American faction, in what became known as the Fort Mims Massacre, and in retaliation a militia led by General Andrew Jackson later destroyed two Native American villages.
Image: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1800
Gabriel, an African American bondsman, assembled an army of about 1,000 enslaved people outside Richmond, Virginia, in the first major slave rebellion in U.S. history; alerted government officials thwarted the revolt, and Gabriel and others were executed. [Test your knowledge of slavery and resistance through history.]
Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
1282
The Aragonese landed at Trapani in support of the Sicilian revolt against Charles I, Angevin king of Naples-Sicily, which had begun with the Sicilian Vespers, a massacre of the French.