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Today in History, May 30th

On May 30, 1431, Joan of Arc was executed in Rouen. Plus the first Decoration Day and the Lincoln Memorial's dedication.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 3 min read Sources checked

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

May 30 is best known for 1431, when Joan of Arc was executed in Rouen at age 19. The date also marks the first Decoration Day in 1868, the forerunner of Memorial Day, and the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922.

The big story: Joan of Arc is executed in Rouen (1431)

Joan’s public life lasted about two years. A farm girl from Domremy, on France’s eastern edge, she convinced the uncrowned Charles VII that she had a mission from God. In April 1429 she rode into Orléans, which the English had under siege, bringing supplies and fresh troops. Within ten days the English pulled back. More victories opened the road to Reims, where Charles was crowned on July 17, 1429, with Joan standing nearby holding her banner. Her luck ran out in May 1430, when Burgundian troops captured her near Compiègne and sold her to their English allies. A church court in Rouen tried her for heresy, mainly for claiming direct guidance from God instead of the church. She recanted, then was judged to have relapsed, and on May 30, 1431, she was burned at the stake. She was 19. The Roman Catholic Church declared her a saint in 1920, and her feast day falls on May 30.

More events on May 30

Year	What happened
1868	The first Decoration Day honored the Civil War dead. At Arlington, about 5,000 people decorated more than 20,000 graves. The day later became Memorial Day.
1911	The first Indianapolis 500 was run. Ray Harroun won in the Marmon Wasp, averaging 74.59 mph over nearly seven hours.
1922	Chief Justice and former President William Howard Taft dedicated the Lincoln Memorial. President Harding’s speech there made him the first president heard on the radio.
1942	Fred Korematsu was arrested in San Leandro, California, for resisting Japanese American internment. His conviction was overturned in 1983.
1967	Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude was published. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.
1967	Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu proclaimed the Republic of Biafra, breaking away from Nigeria. The civil war that followed ended with Biafra’s surrender in 1970.
1971	NASA launched Mariner 9, which became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet when it reached Mars that November.
2020	NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley launched on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, the first astronauts to fly from U.S. soil since the space shuttle’s retirement in 2011.

Born on May 30

1903: Countee Cullen, Harlem Renaissance poet, author of Color.
1909: Benny Goodman, clarinetist and bandleader known as the “King of Swing,” born in Chicago.
1926: Christine Jorgensen, whose gender-affirming surgery made international headlines in the early 1950s, born in New York City.