Today in history: March 30

2003: A law banning cigarette smoking in all places of employment, including restaurants and bars, went into effect in New York City.
2002: Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, who was queen consort of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1936–52), died in her sleep at Windsor Castle at age 101.
1987: Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers is bought for $39.85 million.
1981: In Washington, D.C., on this day in 1981, barely two months after his inauguration as the 40th president of the United States, Ronald Reagan was shot and seriously wounded by would-be assassin John W. Hinckley, Jr.
1975: As the North Vietnamese forces move toward Saigon, desperate South Vietnamese soldiers mob rescue jets.
1972: Hanoi launches its heaviest attack in four years, crossing the DMZ.
1957: Tunisia and Morocco sign a friendship treaty in Rabat.
1950: President Harry S Truman denounces Senator Joe McCarthy as a saboteur of U.S. foreign policy.
1946: The Allies seize 1,000 Nazis attempting to revive the Nazi party in Frankfurt.
1945: The Red Army advances into Austria.
1944: The U.S. fleet attacks Palau, near the Philippines.
1943: Rodgers and Hammerstein's first collaboration, Oklahoma, opens on Broadway.
1941: The German Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel begins its first offensive against British forces in Libya.
1936: Britain announces a naval construction program of 38 warships. This is the largest construction program in 15 years.
1916: Mexican bandit Pancho Villa kills 172 at the Guerrero garrison in Mexico.
1914: American blues vocalist and harmonica virtuoso Sonny Boy Williamson was born in Jackson, Tennessee.
1912: The Treaty of Fès established the French protectorate in Morocco.
1909: The Queensboro Bridge in New York opens. It is the first double decker bridge and links Manhattan and Queens.
1885: In Afghanistan, Russian troops inflict a crushing defeat on Afghan forces Ak Teppe despite orders not to fight.
1870: President U.S. Grant signs bill readmitting Texas to the Union, the last Confederate state readmitted.
1867: William H. Seward, secretary of state under U.S. President Andrew Johnson, signed the Alaska Purchase, a treaty ceding Russian North America to the United States for a price—$7.2 million—that amounted to about two cents per acre.
1858: Hyman L. Lipman of Philadelphia patents the pencil with an eraser attached on one end.
1856: The Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Crimean War.
1840: The English dandy Beau Brummell died, destitute and mad, in Caen, France.
1840: "Beau" Brummell, the English dandy and former favorite of the prince regent, dies in a French lunatic asylum for paupers.
1492: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella sign a decree expelling all Jews from Spain.
1282: The people of Palermo massacred 2,000 French residents in the Sicilian Vespers, a revolt against the Angevin King Charles I.