Historical Events on 13 Feb

Historical Events on 13 Feb

1258 - Baghdad falls to the Mongols, and the Abbasid Caliphate is destroyed.
1503 - Disfida di Barletta - Famous challenge between 13 Italian and 13 French knights near Barletta.
1542 - Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, is executed for adultery.
1575 - Henry III of France is crowned at Rheims.
1575 - Henry III of France marries Louise de Lorraine-Vaudémont.
1633 - Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.
1635 - The first public school in the U.S., Boston Latin School, is founded.
1668 - Spain recognizes Portugal as an independent nation.
1689 - William and Mary are proclaimed co-rulers of England.
1692 - Massacre of Glencoe : About 78 Macdonalds at Glen Coe, Scotland are killed early in the morning for not promptly pledging allegiance to the new king, William of Orange.
1815 - The Cambridge Union Society is founded.
1866 - Jesse James and his gang commit the first armed bank robbery in United States history during peacetime in Liberty, Missouri.
1880 - Work begins on the covering of the Senne, burying Brussels's primary river and creating the modern central boulevards.
1880 - Thomas Edison observes the Edison effect.
1881 - The feminist newspaper La Citoyenne is first published in Paris by the activist Hubertine Auclert.
1894 - Auguste and Louis Lumière patent the Cinematographe, a combination movie camera and projector.
1899 - Tallahassee, Florida records its all time coldest temperature of -2 degrees Fahrenheit.
1914 - Copyright: In New York City the ASCAP (for American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) is established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members.
1920 - The Negro National League is formed.
1934 - The Soviet steamship Cheliuskin sinks in the Arctic Ocean.
1935 - A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh.
1945 - World War II: Red Army forces take Budapest, Hungary from Wehrmacht forces.
1945 - World War II: Royal Air Force bombers are dispatched to Dresden, Germany to attack the city with a massive aerial bombardment (see Bombing of Dresden in World War II).
1955 - Israel obtains 4 of the 7 Dead Sea scrolls.
1960 - Nuclear testing: France tests its first atomic bomb.
1971 - Vietnam War: Backed by American air and artillery support, South Vietnamese troops invade Laos.
1974 - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970, is exiled from the Soviet Union.
1975 - A fire erupts in the World Trade Center in New York City, New York.
1978 - Hilton bombing: a bomb explodes in a refuse truck outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia, killing two refuse collectors and a policeman.
1979 - An intense windstorm strikes western Washington and sinks a 1/2-mile-long section of the Hood Canal Bridge.
1981 - A series of sewer explosions destroys more than two miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky.
1984 - Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
1990 - German reunification: An agreement is reached on a two-stage plan to reunite Germany.
1991 - Gulf War: Two laser-guided "smart bombs" destroy a bunker in Baghdad. The bunker was being used as a military communications outpost and unknown to allied forces, as a shelter for Iraqi civilians.
1997 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 7,000 for the first time closing at 7,022.44.
2000 - The last original "Peanuts" comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies.
2001 - An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter Scale hits El Salvador, killing at least 400.
2004 - The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovers the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093.
2007 - Taiwan opposition leader Ma Ying-jeou resigns as the chairman of the Kuomintang party after being indicted by the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office on charges of embezzlement during his tenure as the mayor of Taipei; Ma also announces his candidacy for the 2
2008 - Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd makes an historic apology to the Indigenous Australians and the Stolen Generations.