| 30 May 1431 | France, England [administration] | After being captured by Burgundian troops and then handed over to English troops, the French military leader Joan of Arc is burnt as a heretic in Rouen, France. |
| 30 May 1434 | Bohemia, Holy Roman Empire [wars] | In the Battle of Lipany, the Bohemian Catholics and Utraquists (the moderate Hussites) defeat the extremist antipapal Taborite Hussites led by Andrew Prokop, who is killed. |
| 30 May 1536 | England [political events] | King Henry VIII of England marries Jane Seymour, the daughter of a knight, a member of the lesser nobility. |
| 30 May 1574 | France [political events] | King Charles IX of France dies. The queen mother Catherine de' Medici acts as regent until his brother, now Henry III, arrives from his kingdom of Poland. |
| 30 May 1593 | England [births and deaths] | Christopher Marlowe, Elizabethan poet and dramatist, who established blank verse as a dramatic medium in plays such as Dr Faustus and Tamburlaine the Great, killed in a brawl in Deptford, London, England (29). |
| 30 May 1635 | Holy Roman Empire, Saxony, Germany [treaties] | The Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II and Elector John George of Saxony sign the Peace of Prague. By its terms, the Elector of Saxony retains possession of Lusatia (part of Bohemia) and his son keeps Magdeburg. The implemention of the terms of the Edict of Restitution of March 1629 is postponed for 40 years, so that possession of ecclesiastical land in the Empire remains as it was in November 1627. The treaty is subsequently accepted by Brandenburg and most Lutheran states. Henceforward, the Thirty Years' War becomes a conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and Spain on the one hand, and the allied forces of France, United Netherlands, and Sweden on the other. |
| 30 May 1744 | England [births and deaths] | Alexander Pope, English poet and satirist, author of ‘Essay on Man’, dies in Twickenham, near London, England (66). |
| 30 May 1778 | France [births and deaths] | Voltaire, celebrated French philosopher and writer, whose major works include Candide (1758) and the Dictionnaire philosophique/Philosophical Dictionary (1764), dies in Paris, France (83). |
| 30 May 1783 | America [newspapers] | The first daily newspaper in colonial America, the Pennsylvania Evening Post, is published. |
| 30 May 1788 | UK [cricket] | The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in London, England, codifies the laws of cricket in England. |
| 30 May 1906 | Italy [law and government] | Giovanni Giolitti forms a coalition ministry in Italy, charged with dealing with strikes and unrest in southern Italy. The arrangement will continue until December 1909. |
| 30 May 1912 | [births and deaths] | Wilbur Wright, US pioneer of aviation, who, with his brother Orville, was the first to achieve sustained powered flight, dies in Dayton, Ohio (45). |
| 30 May 1913 | Balkans [treaties] | A peace treaty between the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan states is signed in London, England, ending the First Balkan War. |
| 30 May 1929 | United Kingdom [elections] | In the British general election, the first held under universal adult suffrage, Labour wins 287 seats, the Conservatives 260, the Liberals 59, and others 9. |
| 30 May 1967 | Nigeria [revolution] | The secession from Nigeria of the province of Biafra, under Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, provokes civil war in Nigeria. |
| 30 May 1975 | USA [statistics and demography] | Unemployment in the USA reaches 9.2%, the highest rate since 1941. |
| 30 May 2006 | UK [business and economics] | British mobile phone company Vodafone announces an annual loss of £22 billion, the largest in European corporate history. |
