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Today in History, June 30th

On June 30, 1934, Hitler purged the SA and other rivals in the Night of the Long Knives. Plus the Tunguska blast and Gone With the Wind.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 2 min read Sources checked

Published June 30, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

June 30 is best known for 1934, when Adolf Hitler turned on his own movement in the purge known as the Night of the Long Knives. The date also saw a mysterious blast flatten Siberian forest at Tunguska in 1908 and Gone With the Wind reach bookstores in 1936.

The big story: The Night of the Long Knives (1934)

By mid-1934, Hitler’s biggest internal headache was the SA, the brawling Storm Troopers who had helped carry him to power. Their chief of staff, Ernst Röhm, wanted the SA folded into the new national army, an idea the generals hated. Hitler worried the SA had grown too strong, so he moved first. Claiming Röhm was plotting a coup, he had Heinrich Himmler’s SS shoot Röhm and many other SA leaders beginning on the night of June 30. The killing went well beyond the SA. Former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, onetime Nazi number two Gregor Strasser and hundreds of other perceived enemies were also murdered. Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen narrowly escaped and lost his job days later. The generals, impressed, gave Hitler their backing, and when President Paul von Hindenburg died that August, they agreed to let Hitler fold the presidency into his own office. From then on, one man ran the state, the army and the party.

More events on June 30

Year	What happened
1520	Spanish forces retreated from the Aztec capital.
1859	Charles Blondin became the first person to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope.
1876	Wounded soldiers from the Battle of the Little Bighorn reached the steamboat Far West to be evacuated.
1908	A huge explosion in Siberia’s Tunguska region flattened about 800 square miles of forest.
1936	Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With the Wind was published.
1953	The first Chevrolet Corvette rolled off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan.
1971	Three Soviet cosmonauts died when their Soyuz 11 spacecraft lost pressure during its return to Earth.
1989	Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing opened in select U.S. theaters.
2015	Misty Copeland became the first African American woman promoted to principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre.

Born on June 30

1917: Lena Horne, singer and actress who rose to fame in the 1940s, born in Brooklyn, New York.
1966: Mike Tyson, boxer who became the youngest heavyweight champion in history, born in Brooklyn, New York.
1985: Michael Phelps, swimmer with a record 28 Olympic medals, born in Baltimore, Maryland.