Aug. 30 (UPI) -- On this date in history:
In 30 B.C., Cleopatra, queen of Egypt and lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, killed herself following the defeat of her forces by Octavian, the future first emperor of Rome.
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1 of 3 | Storm surge from Hurricane Carol batters the coast of Connecticut on August 31, 1954. On August 30, 1954, Hurricane Carol prompted evacuations in North Carolina. File Photo courtesy NOAA
In 1780, Gen. Benedict Arnold betrayed the United States when he promised secretly to surrender the fort at West Point to the British army. He fled to England and died in poverty.
In 1945, Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed in Japan to oversee the country's formal surrender at the end of World War II. MacArthur told United Press Japan's "punishment for her sins, which is just beginning, will be long and bitter."
In 1954, Hurricane Carol prompted evacuations along the North Carolina coast. The storm later battered states along the northern eastern seaboard and killed 72 people.
In 1967, the nomination of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court was confirmed. Marshall was the first African-American to sit on the court.
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File Photo courtesy Library of Congress
In 1983, Guion Bluford became the first African-American astronaut in space.
In 1994, the Lockheed and Martin Marietta corporations agreed to a merger that would create the largest U.S. defense contractor.
File Photo by Eco Clement/UPI
In 2003, more than 120 people, including prominent Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, were killed in a bomb attack on Iraq's Imam Ali Mosque.
In 2005, on the day after Hurricane Katrina struck, 80 percent of New Orleans was flooded. Electricity, water, sewage, communication and transportation systems were out. Three-fourths of all houses were reported damaged or destroyed. Thousands of people were rescued, many plucked from rooftops, and some sought shelter in the Superdome. In other areas along the Gulf of Mexico, Katrina flattened much of Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss., flooded Mobile, Ala., and heavily damaged smaller towns in between. The Katrina death toll would top 1,800.
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In 2008, thousands of residents of Mexico City, Tijuana and other cities in Mexico took to the streets to protest an epidemic of drug-related killings and kidnappings and the Mexican government's apparent inability to stop them.
In 2011, two senior U.S. Justice Department officials charged with overseeing the failed government gun-smuggling "sting" operation dubbed "Fast and Furious" were replaced amid bitter congressional criticism of the mission. The plan was to pass thousands of weapons to suspected Mexican gun smugglers and trace them to drug leaders, but hundreds of firearms were lost, some showing up at crime scenes, including the 2010 slaying of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
In 2013, Northern Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney died in Dublin. He was 74.
