On This Day: John Hinckley Jr. shoots President Reagan

March 30 (UPI) — On this date in history:

In 1842, Dr. Crawford Long became the first physician to use anesthetic (ether) in surgery.

In 1858, a U.S. patent was granted to Hymen Lipman for a pencil with an attached eraser.

In 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward reached an agreement with Russia for the purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million in gold.

In 1870, the 15th Amendment, granting African-American men the right to vote, was adopted into the U.S. Constitution.

In 1923, the Cunard liner “Laconia” arrived in New York City, the first passenger ship to circumnavigate the world. The cruise lasted 130 days.

In 1975, the South Vietnamese city of Da Nang fell to North Vietnamese forces.

In 1981, On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. shot and injured U.S. President Ronald Reagan outside a Washington hotel. White House press secretary James Brady, a Secret Service agent and a Washington police officer also sustained injuries. Hinckley was released from a psychiatric hospital in September 2016.

In 1999, a jury in Oregon awarded $81 million in damages to the family of a smoker who died from lung cancer. A state judge reduced the punitive portion to $32 million.

In 2006, Jill Carroll, a freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, was freed in Baghdad after being held for 82 days by kidnappers.

In 2008, flooding in Tanzanian mines killed at least 75 men, government officials said. Many of the victims appeared to have been engulfed by rising water as they worked.

In 2010, gunmen killed 10 students after they apparently failed to stop at a checkpoint similar to those used by drug traffickers in the Mexican state of Durango while en route to pick up government scholarships.

In 2017, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper signed into a law a repeal of House Bill 2, the controversial measures forcing transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender of their birth.

In 2017, former South Korean President Park Geun-hye was arrested in connection to the corruption investigation that led to her ouster.