On This Day: 30th January

2020 – The World Health Organization declares the COVID-19 pandemic to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

1972 – Pakistan leaves the Commonwealth of Nations in protest of its recognition of breakaway Bangladesh.

1956 – In the United States, Civil Rights Movement leader Martin Luther King Jr.'s home is bombed in retaliation for the Montgomery bus boycott.

1948 – Following the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in his home compound, India's prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, broadcasts to the nation, saying "The light has gone out of our lives". The date of the assassination becomes observed as "Martyrs' Day" in India.

1661 – Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, is ritually executed more than two years after his death, on the 12th anniversary of the execution of the monarch he himself deposed.

1649 – Charles I of England is executed in Whitehall, London.