What Happened on December 13th in History
30 historical events on this date
The English transport ship Duke William sinks in the North Atlantic, killing over 360 people.
Duke William was a ship which served as a troop transport at the Siege of Louisbourg and as a deportation ship in the Ăle Saint-Jean Campaign of the Expulsion of the Acadians during the Seven...
Dartmouth College is founded by the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, with a royal charter from King George III, on land donated by Royal governor John Wentworth.
Dartmouth College is a private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges...
Cyril VI of Constantinople resigns from his position as Ecumenical Patriarch under pressure from the Ottoman Empire.
Cyril VI of Constantinople, lay name Konstantinos Serpentzoglou, was the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople between the years 1813 and 1818.
American Civil War: At the Battle of Fredericksburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee repulses attacks by Union Major General Ambrose Burnside on Marye's Heights, inflicting heavy casualties.
The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the...
American Civil War: Sherman's March to the Sea: The Second Battle of Fort McAllister ends with the fort being seized by Union forces under General William B. Hazen, threatening the city of Savannah with investment.
Sherman's March to the Sea, officially known as the Savannah campaign, or simply Sherman's March, was a military campaign of the American Civil War conducted through Georgia from November 15 until...
Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanking: The city of Nanjing, defended by the National Revolutionary Army under the command of General Tang Shengzhi, falls to the Japanese. This is followed by the Nanking Massacre, in which Japanese troops rape and slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians.
The Second Sino-Japanese War, known in China as the War of Resistance Against Japan, was fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan and its puppet states between 1937 and 1945,...
The Holocaust: The Neuengamme concentration camp opens in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, Germany.
The Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered around six million...
The Battle of the River Plate is fought off the coast of Uruguay; the first naval battle of World War II. The Kriegsmarine's Deutschland-class cruiser (pocket battleship) Admiral Graf Spee engages with three Royal Navy cruisers: HMSÂ Ajax, HMNZSÂ Achilles and HMSÂ Exeter.
The Battle of the River Plate was fought in the South Atlantic on 13 December 1939 as the first British naval battle of the Second World War.
World War II: The Massacre of Kalavryta by German occupying forces in Greece.
The Kalavryta massacre, or the Holocaust of Kalavryta, was the near-extermination of the male population and the total destruction of the town of Kalavryta, Axis-occupied Greece, by the 117th JĂ€ger...
The Knesset votes to move the capital of Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel.
The Mw⯠6.5 Farsinaj earthquake strikes Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII, causing at least 1,119 deaths and damaging over 5,000 homes.
An earthquake struck Hamadan province, Iran on 13 December 1957 at 05:15. The moment magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck at a depth of 15Â km (9.3Â mi). The epicenter of the earthquake was located in the...
Archbishop Makarios III becomes the first President of Cyprus.
The archbishop of Cyprus is the head of the Church of Cyprus. Since 2023 the incumbent archbishop has been George III.
While Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia visits Brazil, his Imperial Bodyguard seizes the capital and proclaims him deposed and his son, Crown Prince Asfa Wossen, Emperor.
The emperor of Ethiopia, also known as the Atse, was the hereditary ruler of the Ethiopian Empire, from at least the 13th century until the abolition of the monarchy in 1975. The emperor was the...
NASA launches Relay 1, the first active repeater communications satellite in orbit.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the United States' civil space program and for research in aeronautics and...
Constantine II of Greece attempts an unsuccessful counter-coup against the Regime of the Colonels.
Constantine II was the last King of Greece, reigning from 6 March 1964 until the abolition of the Greek monarchy on 1 June 1973.
Brazilian President Artur da Costa e Silva issues AI-5 (Institutional Act No. 5), enabling government by decree and suspending habeas corpus.
Artur da Costa e Silva was a Brazilian Army Marshal and the second president of the Brazilian military government that came to power after the 1964 coup d'Ă©tat. He reached the rank of Marshal of the...
Apollo program: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the third and final extra-vehicular activity (EVA) or "Moonwalk" of Apollo 17. To date they are the last humans to set foot on the Moon.
The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. Apollo was conceived in 1960 in the...
Malta becomes a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations.
Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago 80Â km (50Â mi) south...
In the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese forces launch their 1975 Spring Offensive (to 30 April 1975), which results in the final capitulation of South Vietnam.
The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while...
Air Indiana Flight 216 crashes near Evansville Regional Airport, killing 29, including the University of Evansville basketball team, support staff, and boosters of the team.
The Air Indiana Flight 216 crash occurred on December 13, 1977, at 19:22 CST, when a Douglas DC-3, registration N51071 carrying the University of Evansville basketball team, the Evansville Purple...
General Wojciech Jaruzelski declares martial law in Poland, largely due to the actions by Solidarity.
Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski was a Polish military general, politician and de facto leader of the Polish People's Republic from 1981 until 1989, and a military dictator from 13 December 1981 until 22...
The 6.0 Ms⯠North Yemen earthquake shakes southwestern Yemen with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe), killing 2,800, and injuring 1,500.
The 1982 North Yemen earthquake hit near the city of Dhamar, North Yemen on December 13. Measuring 6.2 on the moment magnitude scale, with a maximum perceived intensity of VIII (Severe) on the...
PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat gives a speech at a UN General Assembly meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, after United States authorities refused to grant him a visa to visit UN headquarters in New York.
The Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, officially the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, is the leader of the Executive Committee (EC) of...
The Troubles: Attack on Derryard checkpoint: The Provisional Irish Republican Army launches an attack on a British Army temporary vehicle checkpoint near Rosslea, Northern Ireland. Two British soldiers are killed and two others are wounded.
The Troubles were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it began...
Flagship Airlines Flight 3379 crashes in Morrisville, North Carolina, near RaleighâDurham International Airport, killing 15.
On December 13, 1994, Flagship Airlines Flight 3379, a domestic scheduled passenger flight from Greensboro to Raleigh, North Carolina, crashed during a go-around, killing 15 out of the 20 people on...
Banat Air Flight 166 crashes in Sommacampagna near Verona Villafranca Airport in Verona, Italy, killing 49.
Banat Air Flight 166 was an Antonov An-24 chartered on 13 December 1995 from Romavia by Banat Air.
Indian Parliament attack: Sansad Bhavan, the building housing the Indian Parliament, is attacked by five Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists. Twelve people are killed, including the terrorists.
The 2001 Indian Parliament attack was a terrorist attack on the Parliament of India in New Delhi, India, on 13 December 2001. The attack was carried out by five Jaish-e-Mohammed militants and...
European Union enlargement: The EU announces that Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia will become members on May 1, 2004.
The largest enlargement of the European Union (EU), in terms of number of states and population, took place on 1 May 2004.
Iraq War: Operation Red Dawn: Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is captured near his home town of Tikrit.
The Iraq War, also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a protracted armed conflict in Iraq from 2003 to 2011. It began with the invasion by a United Statesâled coalition, which resulted in the...
The Treaty of Lisbon is signed by the EU member states to amend both the Treaty of Rome and the Maastricht Treaty which together form the constitutional basis of the EU. The Treaty of Lisbon is effective from 1 December 2009.
The Treaty of Lisbon is a European agreement that amends the two treaties which form the constitutional basis of the European Union (EU). The Treaty of Lisbon, which was signed by all EU member...