October 30, 1961

1961Scott Garrelts, American baseball player^[†]

Scott William Garrelts is an American former Major League Baseball pitcher who played for the San Francisco Giants from 1982 to 1991. Garrelts's best year as a Giant came during the 1989 season, when he went 14-5 with a 2.28 ERA, leading his team to the World Series against their Bay Area rivals, the Oakland Athletics.

1961Giorgos Papakonstantinou, Greek economist and politician, Greek Minister of Finance^[†]

Giorgos Papakonstantínou, is a Greek economist and politician and former Minister for the Environment, Energy and Climate Change of Greece and former Minister for Finance. Following expulsion from his party PASOK, he received a one-year suspended sentence for misdemeanours over his handling of the infamous “Lagarde list”. The court found him guilty of removing the names of three relatives of about 2,000 Greeks with money overseas. He is currently a professor at the European University Institute.

1961The Soviet Union detonates the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful explosive device ever detonated.^[†]

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until it dissolved in 1991. During its existence, it was the largest country by area, extending across eleven time zones and sharing borders with twelve countries, and the third-most populous country. An overall successor to the Russian Empire, it was nominally organized as a federal union of national republics, the largest and most populous of which was the Russian SFSR. In practice, its government and economy were highly centralized. As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), it was a flagship communist state. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.

1961Due to "violations of Vladimir Lenin's precepts", it is decreed that Joseph Stalin's body be removed from its place of honour inside Lenin's tomb and buried near the Kremlin Wall with a plain granite marker.^[†]

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until his death in 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. As the founder and leader of the Bolsheviks, Lenin led the October Revolution which established the world's first socialist state. His government won the Russian Civil War and created a one-party state under the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism.