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- 0607 12th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet
- 1138 Cardinal Gregorio Conti is elected anti-pope as Victor IV, succeeding Anacletus II.
- 1138 German king Koenraad II von Hohenstaufen crowned
- 1519 Cortez lands in México
- 1560 Spanish fleet occupies Djerba, at Tripoli
- 1564 Cardinal Granvelle flees Brussels
- 1567 Battle at Oosterweel: Spanish troops destroy Geuzenleger
- 1569 Battle of Jarnac, Count of Anjou defeats Huguenots
- 1591 Battle at Tondibi: Moroccans army under Judar beats sultan Askia Ishaq II of Songhai
- 1634 Académie Française opens
- 1639 Cambridge College renamed Harvard for clergyman John Harvard
- 1639 Harvard College was named for clergyman John Harvard.
- 1656 Jews are denied the right to build a synagogue in New Amsterdam
- 1677 Massachusetts gains title to Maine for $6,000
- 1735 The first US Moravian bishop, David Nitschmann, consecrated in Germany
- 1759 27th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet
- 1781 Sir William Herschel sees what he thinks is a comet but he really discovers the planet Uranus
- 1781 The German-born astronomer William Hershel discovers Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun and the third largest planet by diamete
- 1808 Denmark's demented Christian VII has died March 13 at age 59 after a 32-year reign
- 1809 Seven Swedish army officers break into the royal apartments March 13, seize the insane Gustav IV in a coup d'état, and conduct him to the château of Gripsholm
- 1835 Charles Darwin departs Valparaiso for Andes crossing
- 1845 Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto is premired in Leipzig with Ferdinand David as soloist.
- 1852 Uncle Sam cartoon figure made its debut in the New York Lantern weekly
- 1859 John Brown 1800-1859 brings first black slaves to Canada from the US via the Underground Railway; he is later made famous in a song, John Brown's Body, about a raid he made on Harper's Ferry, Virginia.
- 1861 Jefferson Davis signs bill authorizing use of slaves as soldiers
- 1865 US Confederate Congress calls on black slaves for field service
- 1868 Senate begins President Andrew Johnson impeachment trial
- 1869 Arkansas legislature passes anti-Klan law
- 1878 Oxford defeats Cambridge in their first golf match
- 1881 In Russia, Czar Alexander II is killed near the Winter Palace by a hand-bomb thrown by a member of the "People’s Will," a militant wing of the Narodniki movement, which advocated socialist reform in Russia and the elimination of the central government
- 1884 Siege of Khartoum Sudan begins
- 1884 The siege of Khartoum, Sudan begins (ends on January 26, 1885).
- 1884 US adopts Standard Time
- 1885 In Victoria British Columbia, the Legislature passes Chinese Restriction; bans entry of Chinese immigrants, later ruled unconstitutional
- 1887 Chester Greenwood of Maine patents earmuffs
- 1888 Great Blizzard of 1888 rages
- 1894 J L Johnstone of England invents horse racing starting gate
- 1897 San Diego State University founded.
- 1900 Boer War: British forces occupy Bloemfontein, Orange Free State.
- 1900 In France, length of a workday for women and children is limited to 11 hours by law.
- 1900 James William Tyrrell 1863-1945 starts 2,782 km survey trek from Great Slave Lake to Chesterfield Inlet.
- 1904 Bronze statue of Christ on Argentine-Chilian border dedicated
- 1909 Donald Alexander Smith, Lord Strathcona 1820-1914 sets up Strathcona Trust, a fund for military training and cadet corps in schools.
- 1913 Kansas legislature approves censorship of motion pictures
- 1915 Dodgers manager Wilbert Robinson tries to catch a baseball dropped from an airplane, but the pilot substituted a grapefruit
- 1918 American Red Magen David (Jewish Red Cross) forms
- 1920 Wolfgang Kapp's coup attempt in Berlin fails
- 1921 Mongolia (formerly Outer Mongolia) declares independence from China
- 1921 Mongolia, under Baron Roman Ungern von Sternberg, declares its independence from China.
- 1923 Lee de Forest demonstrates his sound-on-film moving pictures (New York NY)
- 1924 German Republic day
- 1925 Scopes Trial: A law in Tennessee prohibits the teaching of evolution.
- 1925 Tennessee makes it unlawful to teach evolution
- 1928 450 die in St Franciso Valley Dam burst (California)
- 1928 Eileen Vollick 1899-1972 gets pilot's licence; first Canadian woman to be a licensed pilot
- 1930 Clyde Tombaugh announces discovery of Pluto at Lowell Observatory
- 1930 Discovery of the planet Pluto by Clyde W Tombaugh made his discovery on February 18 and announced it on March 13
- 1930 The news of the discovery of Pluto was telegraphed to the Harvard College Observatory.
- 1933 Great Depression: Banks in the United States begin to re-open after the Presidentially mandated "bank holiday".
- 1933 Josef Göbbels becomes German minister of Information & Propaganda
- 1935 Driving tests introduced in Great Britain
- 1938 "Anschluss," annexation of Austria to the Third Reich.
- 1940 Finland-Russian cease fire signed, Finland gives up Karelische
- 1940 Russo-Finnish Winter War ended.
- 1941 A Bougne forms AGRA (Amis du Grand Reich Allemand)
- 1942 Julia Flikke, Nurse Corps, becomes first woman colonel in US army
- 1943 Failed assassin attempt on Hitler during Smolensk-Rastenburg flight
- 1943 Holocaust: German forces liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Krakw.
- 1943 World War II: In Bougainville, Japanese troops end their assault on American forces at Hill 700.
- 1944 USSR recognizes Italian Badoglio government
- 1945 Queen Wilhelmina returns to Netherlands
- 1945 Sicherheitsdienst arrest Dutch resistance fighter Henry Werkman
- 1947 "Brigadoon" opens at Ziegfeld Theater NYC for 581 performances
- 1947 19th Academy Awards: "Best Years of Our Lives", Frederic March, Olivia de Havilland win
- 1950 General Motors reports net earnings of $656,434,232 (record)
- 1951 Israel demands DM 6.2 billion compensation from Germany
- 1954 Battle of in Bin Ph: Viet Minh forces attack the French.
- 1955 Bir BSD Mahendra succeeds Tribhubana as king of Nepal
- 1956 New Zealand bowl out West Indies for 77 at Eden Park to score their first Test Cricket win
- 1957 Bloody battles after anti-Batista demonstration in Havana Cuba
- 1957 Cuban student revolutionaries storm the presidential palace in Havana in a failed attempt on the life of President Fulgencio Batista.
- 1958 Govt troops land in Sumatra Indonesia
- 1961 Elizabeth Gurley Finn (70) becomes president of US Communist Party
- 1961 Floyd Patterson KOs Ingemar Johansson in 6 to retain heavyweight boxing title
- 1961 JFK sets up the Alliance for Progress
- 1961 Landslide in USSR, kills 145
- 1961 Major-General Allard the first Canadian to command a British army division
- 1961 Old type, black & white notes cease to be legal tender
- 1961 Pablo Picasso (79) marries his model Jacqueline Rocque (37)
- 1962 Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the USA, proposes a document, called Operation Northwoods, regarding performing terrorist attacks in Guantanamo Bay, to Secretary of Defense Robert Mcnamara. The proposal is scrapped and President John F. Kennedy removes Lemnitzer from his position.
- 1962 Yugoslavia grants 1,000 prisoners amnesty
- 1963 2 Russian reconnaissance flights over Alaska
- 1963 Indonesia & Netherlands recover diplomatic relations
- 1964 Turkey threatens Cyprus with armed attack
- 1965 Beatles' "Eight Days a Week", single goes #1 & stays #1 for 2 weeks
- 1965 Jeff Beck replaces Eric Clapton of the Yardbirds
- 1967 Congo sentences ex-premier Moïse Tsjombe to death
- 1968 Beatles release "Lady Madonna" in the UK
- 1969 Apollo 9 returns to Earth
- 1970 100 year Beehive anniversary ends in brawl in Amsterdam
- 1970 Digital Equipment Corp introduces PDP-11 minicomputer
- 1970 San Francisco city employees begin 4-day strike
- 1973 Syria adopts constitution
- 1974 Glenn Turner scores twin tons for New Zealand's first win against Australia
- 1977 Dennis Lillee takes 6-26, England all out 95 in Centenary Test
- 1978 GO introduces its first bi-level coaches.
- 1978 Moluccans "suicide commandos" occupies Province house
- 1978 Visitor posting - March 13 1978 Dean Thrumble was born
- 1978 The Canadian Radio & Television Commission rejects introduction of pay TV in Canada.. I guess we were not ready for it
- 1979 European Monetary System is established, ECU created
- 1979 Gairy dictatorship in Grenada overthrown by New Jewel Movement
- 1979 The New Jewel Movement, headed by Maurice Bishop, ousts Prime Minister Eric Gairy in a nearly bloodless coup d'etat in Grenada.
- 1980 Ford Motor Co found innocent in death of 3 women in a fiery Pinto
- 1981 Attempt on Pope John Paul II by Mehemet Ali Agca
- 1984 Last day of 1st-class cricket for G Chappell, R Marsh, B Laird
- 1984 Western Australia beat Queensland by four wickets to win the Sheffield Shield
- 1985 Funeral services held for Konstantin Chernenko (Moscow)
- 1986 Microsoft has its Initial public offering.
- 1986 Soyuz T-15 carries 2 cosmonauts to Soviet space station Mir
- 1986 Space probe Giotto encounters Halley's Comet
- 1987 John Gotti is acquitted of racketeering
- 1988 14th People's Choice Awards: Fatal Attraction, Bill Cosby win
- 1989 27th shuttle, Discovery 8, launched, first woman to do the countdown
- 1989 FDA orders recall of all Chilean fruit in US
- 1990 Nicholoas Braithwaite elected premier of Grenada
- 1991 Exxon pays $1-billion dollars in fines & cleanup of Valdez oil spill (Prince William Sound, Alaska)
- 1991 The United States Justice Department announces that Exxon has agreed to pay $1 billion for the clean-up of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
- 1992 570 die in a Turkish earthquake
- 1992 Martina Navratilova & Judy Nelson settle their galamony suit
- 1993 Visitor posting - Lauren Hermsen born - USA
- 1993 Blizzard of '93 hits north-east US
- 1994 33.3% of Austria votes for ultra-right FPÖ
- 1994 Cuba Godding Jr (26) weds Sara Kapfer (26)
- 1994 Oil tank/airship crash at Bosporus (huge fire/15+ killed)
- 1994 President Mangope of Bophuthaswana deposed
- 1995 9th Soul Train Music Awards: Boyz II Men, Anita Baker win
- 1995 Anti fascist Kazakhstan anti-parliament forms
- 1995 Hungarian Forint devalued 9%
- 1995 Istanbul police shoot dead 16 Alawitische demonstrators
- 1996 At Dunblane, a thirteenth century village on the edge of the Scottish Highlands, forty-three-year-old Thomas Hamilton bursts into the gymnasium of the Dunblane Primary School with four guns, and opens fire on a kindergarten class. Sixteen children and their teacher, Gwenne Mayor, are killed before Hamilton turns the gun on himself
- 1996 Sri Lanka beat India in World Cup semi as riots stop play
- 1996 The Dunblane Massacre: in Dunblane, Scotland, 16 children and 1 adult teacher are shot dead by a spree killer who then commits suicide.
- 1997 India's Missionaries of Charity chooses Sister Nirmala to succeed Mother Teresa as its leader.
- 1997 The Phoenix lights were seen over Phoenix, Arizona, & were seen by hundreds of people, & millions on television. And are now, hotly debated in controversy.
- 2003 Human evolution: The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old upright-walking human footprints have been found in Italy.
- 2007 Visitor posting - "Doc" Jones and 5 other soldiers in Iraq exposed to chemical weapons
- 2007 The Bank of England launched a new 20, featuring the Scottish economist Adam Smith. It was the first note in the new Series F banknotes
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