Previous Day - Next Day
“The greatest friend of Truth is time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion Humility”
~ Charles Caleb Colton
Wikiquote (Charles Caleb Colton (1780 – 1832) an English cleric, writer and collector, well known for his eccentricities.)
March 13th, 624
Muhammad
624 - Battle of Badr: a key battle between Prophet Muhammad's army – the new followers of Islam and the Quraish of Mecca. The Muslims won this battle, known as the turning point of Islam, which took place in the Hejaz region of western Arabia.
Wikipedia Islamic Depictions of Muhammad: A depiction of Muhammad (with veiled face) advancing on Mecca from Siyer-i Nebi, a 16th-century Ottoman manuscript. The angels Gabriel, Michael, Israfil and Azrail, are also shown.; ● Muhammed re-dedicating the Black Stone at the Kaaba. From Jami' al-Tavarikh ("The Universal History" or "Compendium of Chronicles") written by Rashid Al-Din and illustrated in Tabriz, Persia, c. 1315. (Library of the University of Edinburgh) ● An angel presenting Muhammad with a city (presumably Mecca). Illustration of the Miraj-name, Tabriz, c. 1360-70. (Topkapi Palace Library, Istanbul) ● Muhammad visits Paradise during his Night Journey. Illustration of the Miraj-Nama, Persian, 15th century. (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris) ● Muhammad (faceless) at the Kaba in Mecca. Ottoman, 1595. (Topkapi Museum, Istanbul) ● During his Night Journey, Muhammad visits hell, where he views women being hung by their hair and tormented by a demon for the sin of showing their hair in public. Illustration of the Miraj-Nama, Persian, 15th century. (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris) ● Arab illustration of Mohammed preaching from a minbar to the earliest converts. Al-Bîrûnî, al-âthâr al-bâqiya. (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Manuscrits Arabe 1489 fol. 5v), credit Religion Facts.
March 13th, 1138
Cardinal Gregorio Conti is elected Antipope as Victor IV succeeding Anacletus II.
Wikipedia.org Image: Fresco painting of the Resurrection Chora Church, Istanbul, Turkey.
March 13th, 1639
Harvard College is named for clergyman John Harvard.
Wikipedia Photo: John Harvard (November 26, 1607 – September 14, 1638) an English minister in America which Massachusetts Bay Colony's fledgling New College was renamed Harvard College in his honor. (John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard ● Tablet, Emmanuel College (Cambridge) chapel ● Emmanuel College window (1884) depicting John Harvard on left)
Annenberg Hall: "the great bristling brick Valhalla....that house of honor and hospitality which...dispenses...laurels to the dead and dinners to the living." Henry James, from The American Scene (1907), credit: Steve Rosenthal.
March 13th, 1697
Conquistador:
1697 - Spanish conquest of Guatemala; Nojpetén (Tayasal), capital of the Itza Maya kingdom, fell to Spanish conquistadors.
Wikipedia Image: Conquistadors (Spanish "conquerors") were soldiers, explorers, and adventurers at the service of the Spanish Empire (sailing beyond Europe, conquering territory and opening trade routes, colonizing much of the world for Spain and Portugal in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries)
● Christopher Columbus setting foot in the New World in 1492
● Conquistadors praying before a battle
● Conquistadors and their Tlaxcalan allies enter Tenochtitlan
● The surrender of Granada in 1492. Muhammad XII before Ferdinand and Isabella
● Detail of Velázquez's Portrait of Juan de Pareja a contemporary morisco Spaniard, slave and afterwards freedman, assistant and trust man of Diego Velazquez
● Conquistador, jQuey-deviantart.
March 13th, 1781
William Herschel discovers Uranus.
Wikipedia Image: Uranus rings, artist rendition.
March 13th, 1862
American Civil War:
1862 - The Federal government of the United States forbids all Union army officers to return fugitive slaves, thus effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation.
1865 - The Confederate States of America agree to the use of African American troops.
Wikipedia Image: ● Lincoln Memorial; an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument.
● The northern army led by George McClellan and the southern army led by Robert E. Lee met at Antietam Creek, Maryland in September, 1862. It was a bloody battle where 13,000 Confederates and 12,000 Union troops died in just one day. McClellan had hesitated to attack before the battle thus letting the southern troops regroup. Also, he had saved reserves and refused to use them at the end of the battle thinking that Lee was holding reserves for a counterattack, even though those reserves didn't exist. The Union victory stopped Lee's northward advance and was a turning point in the war.
● Battle of Antietam / Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland
● First Battle Between Ironclads: CSS Virginia/Merrimac (left) vs. USS Monitor, in 1862 at the Battle of Hampton Roads.
● Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. The Atlantic.
March 13th, 1881
Alexander II of Russia is killed near his palace when a bomb is thrown at him.
Wikipedia Painting: Coronation of Tsar Alexander II (by Mihály Zichy of the coronation of Emperor Alexander II and the Empress Maria Alexandrovna, which took place on 26 August/7 September 1856 at the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin - the painting depicts the moment of the coronation in which the Emperor crowns his Empress)
March 13th, 1900
Second Boer War: British forces occupy Bloemfontein, Orange Free State.
Wikipedia Photo: Second Boer War; (Dutch: Tweede Boerenoorlog, Afrikaans: Tweede Vryheidsoorlog or Tweede Boereoorlog) was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic (Transvaal Republic) and the Orange Free State.
March 13th, 1921
Mongolia, under Baron Roman Ungern von Sternberg, declares its independence from China.
Wikipedia Image: Map of Mongol Empire at its height; Genghis Khan, credit The Field Museum in Chicago; Genghis Khan various Mongolian tribes joined together in 1206; Mongol warriors was created for an Islamic history book, Rashid al-Din's History of the World of 1307, courtesy of the Edinburgh University Library, Scotland.
March 13th, 1925
Scopes Trial: A law in Tennessee prohibits the teaching of evolution.
Wikipedia.org Photo: William Jennings Bryan ● Clarence Darrow was a trial attorney made famous for his defense of a Tennessee educator accused of breaking a state law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. Bettmann / Corbis ● University of Missouri-Kansas City Photo: Darrow and Bryan at the Scopes Trial 1925 ● Evangelist T.T. Martin's books against the theory of evolution are sold at an outdoor stand in Dayton, Tenn., 1925, scene of the Scopes trial. (AP Photo) ● John Thomas Scopes The teacher at the center of proceedings - Political cartoon - The Daily Star
March 13th, 1930
The news of the discovery of Pluto (now considered a Dwarf Planet) by Clyde Tombaugh is telegraphed to the Harvard College Observatory.
Wikipedia Image: The dwarf planets Pluto, Ceres, and Eris, credit NASA
March 13th, 1933
Great Depression: Banks in the United States begin to re-open after President Franklin D. Roosevelt mandates a "bank holiday".
Wikipedia Photo: Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother depicts destitute pea pickers in California, centering on Florence Owens Thompson, age 32, a mother of seven children, in Nipomo, California, March 1936; Bud Fields and his family. Alabama. 1935 or 1936. Photographer: Walker Evans; Unemployed men vying for jobs at the American Legion Employment Bureau in Los Angeles during the Great Depression.
March 13th, 1938
World News Roundup is broadcast for the first time on CBS Radio in the United States.
Wikipedia Photo: World News Roundup; gave the world the voices of Edward R. Murrow and William L. Shirer, credit DCA.lib.tufts.edu
March 13th, 1938
World War II:
1938 - Anschluss of Austria falls to Germany.
1940 - Winter War; between Finland and Russia ends with the Moscow Peace Treaty and the Soviet Union ceding almost all of Finnish Karelia. (Finnish troops and the remaining population are immediately evacuated.)
1943 - Bougainville Campaign In Bougainville Island, Japanese troops end their assault on American forces at Hill 700.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
March 13th, 1943
World War II: Holocaust;
1943 - German forces liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Kraków.
Wikipedia Photo: World War II, The Holocaust. Sources: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum USHMM, History 1900s, Internet Masters of Education Technology IMET, Techno Friends, Veterans Today, Concern.
March 13th, 1954
Vietnam War:
1954 - Battle of Điện Biên Phủ; Viet Minh forces attack the French
Wikipedia Photo: Vietnam_War; Side view of an HH-53 helicopter of the 40th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron as seen from the gunner's position on an A-1 of the 21st Specialist Operations Squadron. (USAF Photo by Ken Hackman), Boston Globe;
Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, credit Free Republic;
Vietnam War: The Big Picture / Boston Globe.
March 13th, 1957
Cuban Revolution:
1957 - Cuban student revolutionaries storm the presidential palace in Havana in a failed attempt on the life of President Fulgencio Batista.
1962 - Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivers a proposal, called Operation Northwoods, regarding performing terrorist attacks upon Guantánamo Bay Naval Base to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The proposal is scrapped and President John F. Kennedy removes Lemnitzer from his position.
Wikipedia Photo / Map: The leadership of the Cuban revolution; Fidel Castro played the leading role in the Cuban revolution against Fulgencio Batista (1957) AFP; Fidel Castro leads men in a cheer, Cuba, 1957, Bettmann/ Corbis; Cuban Airlift to the United States (1959 and 1962); Resiste Cuba, homenaje a la revolución cubana y sus héroes música: Protesta-Por Cuba; Che Guevara and Fidel Castro ; Official caption: "Off loading Cuban refugees at the Miami sea buoy", photo dated 4 May 1964; Photo No. 7CGD-050464 #12; Guerrillero Heroico - Alberto Korda's famous photograph of Che Guevara; The popularized cropped version.
March 13th, 1964
Murder of Kitty Genovese: American Kitty Genovese is murdered, reportedly in view of neighbors who did nothing to help her, prompting research into the bystander effect.
Wikipedia Photo: Catherine "Kitty" Genovese is shown in these undated photos.
March 13th, 1969
Apollo Program: NASA launches Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the lunar module.
Wikipedia Photo: Apollo Program: Apollo 11 first manned Moon landing and the first walk on the surface on the moon. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module Eagle. Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. Armstrong and Aldrin explored the Sea of Tranquility for two and a half hours while crewmate Michael Collins orbited above in the command module Columbia.
The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth, taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft, at a distance of about 45,000 kilometres (28,000 mi).
March 13th, 1988
The Seikan Tunnel, the world's longest sub-aqueous tunnel (53.85 km) between the Japanese islands of Honshū and Hokkaidō opens.
Wikipedia Image: Seikan Tunnel; the world's longest sub-aqueous tunnel (53.85 km) between the Japanese islands of Honshū and Hokkaidō.
March 13th, 1991
Exxon Valdez oil spill:
1991 - United States Department of Justice announces that Exxon has agreed to pay $1 billion for the clean-up of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
Wikipedia Photo: Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989, when Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker bound for Long Beach, California struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef and spilled 260,000 to 750,000 barrels (41,000 to 119,000 m3) of crude oil. (It is considered to be one of the most devastating human-caused environmental disasters.)
March 13th, 1992
Earthquake:
1992 - A magnitude 6.8 earthquake kills over 500 in Erzincan, eastern Turkey.
Wikipedia Image: Preliminary Determination of Epicenters / Aleppo Syria; Anchorage, Alaska - March 28, 1964 Prince William Sound USA earthquake and tsunami; 8.9 Mega Earthquake Strikes Japan; Tsunami Swirls Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture March 12 2011. credit NOAA / NGDC, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, USGS, National Geographics.
March 13th, 2003
Human evolution The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old footprints of an upright-walking human have been found in Italy.
Wikipedia Photo: An illustration of Australopithecus afarensis walking and leaving footprints, Smithsonian / Karen Carr Studio ● "Finding the footprints was a shocking experience - an astounding experience" Dr Paolo Mietto.
March 13th, 2008
Gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $1,000 per ounce for the first time.
Wikipedia Photo: The Gold Standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of gold.
March 13th, 2013
Pope Francis is elected in the papal conclave to succeed Pope Benedict XVI.
Wikipedia Photo: Pope Francis born Jorge Mario Bergoglio (December 17, 1936) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
March 13th, 2016
Modern conflicts in the Middle East, social unrest and terrorist attacks:
2016 - Ankara bombing; An explosion occurs in central Ankara, Turkey, with at least 37 people killed and 127 wounded.
2016 - Grand-Bassam shootings; Three gunmen attack two hotels in the Ivory Coast town of Grand-Bassam, killing at least 18 people and injuring 33 others.
Wikipedia Photo: Middle East satellite image, NASA. ● Camels are seen early morning on a beach in the Marina area of Dubai October 16, 2008. (Steve Crisp, Reuters) ● A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad burns during clashes between rebels and Syrian troops in Selehattin, near Aleppo, on July 23, 2012. (Bulent Kilic, AFP / GettyImages) ● Egyptians gather in their thousands in Tahrir Square to mark the one year anniversary of the revolution on Jan. 25, 2012 in Cairo Egypt. Tens of thousands have gathered in the square on the first anniversary of the Arab uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. (Jeff J Mitchell, Getty Images) ● Black smoke rises above the Tehran skyline as supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi burn tires and other material in the streets as they fight running battles with police to protest the declared results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Ben Curtis, AP) ● The Iron Dome defense system fires to interecpt incoming missiles from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012. (Tsafrir Abayov, AP)