By Elinor Evans

Published: Saturday, 30 July 2022 at 12:00 am

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30 July 762 

Abbasid Caliph Abu Jaafar Al-Mansour commissioned the construction of Baghdad as his new capital city on the Tigris.

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30 July 1511 

Birth in Arezzo, Tuscany of painter, architect and historian Giorgio Vasari. In 1550 he published his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, one of art history’s most important early texts.

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30 July 1540 

Three reformers (Barnes, Garrett and Jerome) were burned for heresy and three Catholics (Abel, Powell and Fetherston) were hanged, drawn and quartered for treason at Smithfield.

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30 July 1756

In St Petersburg, the architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli unveils the magnificent Catherine Palace to a delighted Catherine the Great.

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30 July 1863 

Henry Ford, the American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company, was born in Wayne County, Michigan.

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30 July 1975

Having arranged to meet his Mafia contacts in a car park in a Detroit suburb, the controversial American union leader Jimmy Hoffa disappears and is never seen again.

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