April 30
George Washington inaugurated
1789: After traveling for about two weeks from his home at Mount Vernon, George Washington was inaugurated as the first president of the United States on this day. The ceremony took place on Wall Street in New York City, near the spot now marked by John Quincy Adams Ward's statue of Washington. A great crowd broke into cheers as Washington, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall, took the oath administered by Chancellor Robert R. Livingston and retired indoors to read his inaugural address to Congress.
1980: Queen Beatrix ascended the throne of The Netherlands.
1975: The South Vietnamese capital of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) fell to North Vietnamese troops during the Vietnam War.
1945: German dictator Adolf Hitler and his wife committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin.
1939: The National Broadcasting Company made the first public television broadcast in the United States, at the New York World's Fair.
1900: American railroad engineer Casey Jones, later made famous in song, died in a train wreck.
1812: Louisiana became the 18th U.S. state admitted to the Union.
Édouard Manet
French painter Édouard Manet, who died this day in 1883, broke new ground by defying traditional techniques of representation and by choosing subjects from the events and circumstances of his own time. His critical break with academic painting's historical emphasis on illusionism paved the way for the revolutionary work of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.
"It will endure as the characteristic _expression of his talent, as the highest mark of his power.…When other artists correct nature by painting Venus they lie. Manet asked himself why he should lie. Why not tell the truth?"
Émile Zola, on the painting Olympia (1863) by Édouard Manet
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