February 13

2024 Calendar

February 13 is the 44th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 321 days remaining until the end of the year (322 in leap years).

Events

Up to 1900

1322 - The central tower of Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire, England, falls.
1462 - The Treaty of Westminster is finalized between Edward IV of England and the Scottish Lord of the Isles.
1503 - Disfida di Barletta: A tournament between 13 Italian and 13 French knights takes place near Barletta.
1542 – Catherine Howard, fifth wife of King Henry VIII of England, is executed for adultery.
1575 - Henry III of France is crowned King.
1633 – Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the inquisition.
1660 - Charles XI of Sweden becomes King at the age of 4 years, meaning that a regent rules Sweden until 1672.
1668 - Spain recognizes Portugal as an independent country.
1689 - William III and Mary II are crowned King and Queen of England, Ireland and Scotland.
1692 – At least thirty members of the MacDonald Clan are massacred in Glencoe, Scotland.
1739 - Battle of Karnal: The army of Persian ruler Nadir Shah defeats the forces of Mughal Emperor of India, Muhammad Shah.
1857 - British passenger steamer Tempest disappears in the North Atlantic Ocean after leaving New York City, with 150 people on board.
1858 - Searching for the source of the Nile, Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke become the first Europeans to reach Lake Tanganyika.
1861 - Francis II of the Two Sicilies surrenders at Gaeta to the army of Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy.
1880 - Thomas Edison observes the Edison effect.
1881 - The feminist newspaper La Citoyenne is first published in Paris by the activist Hubertine Auclert.

1901 – 2000

1918 - A magnitude 7.3 earthquake strikes Guangdong province, China.
1931 – New Delhi becomes the capital city of India.
1934 - Soviet steamship Cheliuskin sinks in the Arctic Ocean.
1935 - Bruno Hauptmann is found guilty of kidnapping and murdering the infant son of Charles Lindbergh.
1944 - Norwegian passenger ship Irma is torpedoed near Kristiansund, killing 61 people. It is revealed after the Second World War that it was a torpedo from the Norwegian Navy that hit the ship.
1945 – The Royal Air Force bombs the German city of Dresden in World War II.
1945 - World War II: The Siege of Budapest ends with the unconditional surrender of the German and Hungarian armies to the Red Army.
1951 - Korean War: The Battle of Chipyong-ni begins.
1955 – Israel gains four of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls.
1960 - France becomes the fourth country to own nuclear weapons.
1961 - A 500,000-year-old rock is discovered near Olancha, California.
1971 - South Vietnamese troops invade Laos, with American support.
1978 - A bomb explodes outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia, killing 2 refuse collectors and a police officer.
1980 - The 1980 Winter Olympics begin in Lake Placid, New York. The games became best known for the Miracle on Ice hockey game on February 22.
1981 - A series of sewer explosions destroys more than two miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky.
1982 - The Rio Negro massacre occurs in Guatemala.
1983 - A cinema fire in Turin, Italy, kills 64 people.
1984 – Konstantin Chernenko becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
1988 – The Winter Olympic Games open in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Like in 1976, Canada hosts the Olympics without winning a gold medal (They do, however, win a record 14 gold medals when they host the games in Vancouver in 2010).
1990 - Agreement is reached on a two-stage plan to re-unite Germany.
1991 – US bombers hit Baghdad in the Gulf War.
1996 - English pop music group Take That announces that it is splitting. The band re-forms in 2005.
2000 – The last Peanuts comic strip is printed in newspapers, a day after the death of Charles Schulz.

From 2001

2001 – A magnitude 6.6 earthquake hits El Salvador, killing at least 400 people.
2004 - The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announces the discovery of the Universe's largest-known diamond, white dwarf.
2007 - Taiwan's Opposition leader Ma Ying-jeou resigns as Chairman of the Kuomintang Party.
2008 – Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd makes a historic apology to Indigenous Australians and the Stolen Generations.
2010 - A bomb attack in Pune, Maharashtra, India, kills 17 people.
2011 – After the removal of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the army suspends the constitution, and announces that it will remain in power until elections later in the year.
2012 - The European Space Agency's Vega rocket is launched from French Guiana.
2014 - Prime Minister of Italy Enrico Letta announces his intention to resign, less than ten months into the job, after instabilities in his coalition government.
2014 - Belgium's parliament votes to extend its euthanasia law to terminally-ill children, becoming the first country to allow euthanasia for people of all ages.
2017 - Kim Jong-nam (older half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un) is murdered at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia.