April 30, 1945

1945J. Michael Brady, British radiologist^[†]

Sir John Michael Brady is an emeritus professor of oncological imaging at the University of Oxford. He has been a Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, since 1985 and was elected a foreign associate member of the French Academy of Sciences in 2015. He was formerly BP Professor of Information Engineering at Oxford from 1985 to 2010 and a senior research scientist in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 1980 to 1985.

1945Annie Dillard, American novelist, essayist, and poet^[†]

Annie Dillard is an American author, best known for her narrative prose in both fiction and nonfiction. She has published works of poetry, essays, prose, and literary criticism, as well as two novels and one memoir. Her 1974 book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. From 1980, Dillard taught for 21 years in the English department of Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut.

1945Mimi Fariña, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and activist (died 2001)^[†]

Margarita Mimi Baez Fariña was an American singer-songwriter and activist, the youngest of three daughters of mother Joan Chandos Bridge and Mexican-American physicist Albert Baez. She was the younger sister of the singer and activist Joan Baez.

1945Michael J. Smith, American pilot, and astronaut (died 1986)^[†]

Michael John Smith, was an American engineer and astronaut. He served as the pilot of the Space Shuttle Challenger when it was destroyed during the STS-51-L mission, breaking up 73 seconds into the flight, and at an altitude of 48,000 feet (14.6 km), killing all seven crew members. Smith's voice was the last one heard on the Challenger voice recorder.

1945Eva Braun, German photographer and office and lab assistant, wife of Adolf Hitler (born 1912)^[†]

Eva Anna Paula Hitler was a German photographer who was the longtime companion and briefly the wife of Adolf Hitler. Braun met Hitler in Munich in 1929 when she was an assistant and model for his personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. She began seeing Hitler often about two years later.

1945Adolf Hitler, Austrian-German politician and author, dictator of Nazi Germany (born 1889)^[†]

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Germany during the Nazi period from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. His invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 marked the outbreak of the Second World War. Throughout his leadership in the ensuing conflict, he was closely involved in the direction of German military operations and the perpetration of the Holocaust—the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims.

1945World War II: Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide after being married for less than 40 hours. Soviet soldiers raise the Victory Banner over the Reichstag building.^[†]

The Führerbunker was an air raid shelter located near the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, Germany. It was part of a subterranean bunker complex constructed in two phases in 1936 and 1944. It was the last of the Führer Headquarters (Führerhauptquartiere) used by Adolf Hitler during World War II.

1945World War II: Stalag Luft I prisoner-of-war camp near Barth, Germany is liberated by Soviet soldiers, freeing nearly 9,000 American and British airmen.^[†]

Stalag Luft I was a German World War II prisoner-of-war (POW) camp near Barth, Western Pomerania, Germany, for captured Allied airmen. The presence of the prison camp is said to have shielded the town of Barth from Allied bombing. About 9,000 airmen – 7,588 American and 1,351 British and Canadian – were imprisoned there when it was liberated on the night of 30 April 1945 by Soviet troops.