What Happened on February 13th in History

The British Raj completes its transfer from Calcutta to New Delhi.

The British Raj was the period of rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent, lasting from 1858 to 1947. It is also called Crown rule in India, or direct rule in India. The region under...

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.

Flemington is a borough in and the county seat of Hunterdon County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Most of the borough is located in the Amwell Valley, a low-lying area of the Newark Basin, and...

World War II: The siege of Budapest concludes with the unconditional surrender of German and Hungarian forces to the Red Army.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major...

World War II: Royal Air Force bombers are dispatched to Dresden, Germany to attack the city with a massive aerial bombardment.

The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918...

Korean War: Battle of Chipyong-ni, which represented the "high-water mark" of the Chinese incursion into South Korea, commences.

The Korean War was an armed conflict fought on the Korean Peninsula between North Korea and South Korea and their allies. North Korea was supported by China and the Soviet Union, while South Korea...

Frank Selvy becomes the only NCAA Division I basketball player ever to score 100 points in a single game.

Franklin Delano Selvy was an American National Basketball Association (NBA) player who was best known for holding the record for the most points (100) in a Division I college basketball game. Born...

Israel obtains four of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls.

Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. It is bordered by Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, and Egypt to the...

Twenty-nine people are killed when Sabena Flight 503 crashes into Monte Terminillo near Rieti, Italy.

The crash of Sabena Flight 503 was an accident involving a Douglas DC-6 of the Belgian airline company Sabena which crashed into Monte Terminillo near Rieti, Italy, 100 km north east of Rome on 13...

With the success of a nuclear test codenamed "Gerboise Bleue", France becomes the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the performance of nuclear weapons and the effects of their explosion. Over 2,000 nuclear weapons tests have been carried out since...

Black college students stage the first of the Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee.

The Nashville sit-ins, which lasted from February 13 to May 10, 1960, were part of a protest to end racial segregation at lunch counters in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, United States. The sit-in...

An allegedly 500,000-year-old rock is discovered near Olancha, California, US, that appears to anachronistically encase a spark plug.

The Coso artifact is an object falsely claimed by its discoverers to be a spark plug encased in a geode. Discovered on February 13, 1961, by Wallace Lane, Virginia Maxey, and Mike Mikesell while...

American researchers discover the Madrid Codices by Leonardo da Vinci in the National Library of Spain.

The Madrid Codices I–II, are two manuscripts by Leonardo da Vinci which were discovered in the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid in 1965 by Dr. Jules Piccus, Language Professor at the...

Fire at One World Trade Center (North Tower) of the World Trade Center in New York.

The original World Trade Center (WTC) was a complex of seven buildings in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Built primarily between 1966 and 1975, it was dedicated on April...

Hilton bombing: A bomb explodes in a refuse truck outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia, killing two refuse collectors and a policeman.

The Sydney Hilton Hotel bombing occurred on 13 February 1978, when a bomb exploded outside the Hilton Hotel in George Street, Sydney, Australia. The hotel was hosting the first Commonwealth Heads of...

An intense windstorm strikes western Washington and sinks a 0.5-mile (0.80 km) long section of the Hood Canal Bridge.

The February 13, 1979, windstorm was a natural phenomenon which happened in the West Coast region of Canada and the Pacific Northwest. During the early morning, an intense wave cyclone moved across...

A series of sewer explosions destroys more than two miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky.

On February 13, 1981, a series of explosions destroyed more than 13 miles (21 km) of sewer lines and streets in the center of Louisville in Kentucky, United States. The explosions resulted in...

A cinema fire in Turin, Italy, kills 64 people.

Cinema Statuto was a movie theater located in Turin, Italy, when on 13 February 1983, at 18:15, during the projection of La Chèvre, a fire caused the death of 64 people as a result of smoke...

Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko was a Soviet politician who served as the de jure leader of the Soviet Union from February 1984 until his death in March 1985.

Gulf War: Two laser-guided "smart bombs" destroy the Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad. Allied forces said the bunker was being used as a military communications outpost, but over 400 Iraqi civilians inside were killed.

The Gulf War was an armed conflict between Iraq and a 42-country coalition led by the United States. The coalition's efforts were in two phases: Operation Desert Shield, which marked the military...

The Nepalese Civil War is initiated in the Kingdom of Nepal by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist-Centre).

The Nepalese Civil War (1996–2006) was a protracted and countrywide armed conflict in the then Kingdom of Nepal between the Kingdom's rulers and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), with the...

A magnitude 6.6 earthquake hits El Salvador, killing at least 315.

Seismic magnitude scales are used to describe the overall strength or "size" of an earthquake. These are distinguished from seismic intensity scales that categorize the intensity or severity of...

The Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announces the discovery of the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093. Astronomers named this star "Lucy" after The Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA), previously known as the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is an astrophysics research institute jointly operated by the Harvard...

Taiwan opposition leader Ma Ying-jeou resigns as the chairman of the Kuomintang party after being indicted on charges of embezzlement during his tenure as the mayor of Taipei; Ma also announces his candidacy for the 2008 presidential election.

Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa, lies between the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific...

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd makes a historic apology to the Indigenous Australians and the Stolen Generations.

Kevin Michael Rudd is an Australian diplomat and former politician who served as the 26th prime minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010 and from June to September 2013, holding office as the leader...

A bomb explodes in the city of Pune, Maharashtra, India, killing 17 and injuring 60 more.

On 13 February 2010 at approximately 19:15 Indian Standard Time, a bomb exploded at a German bakery in the Indian city of Pune, Maharashtra. The blast killed 18 people, including an Italian woman,...

For the first time in more than 100 years the Umatilla, an American Indian tribe, are able to hunt and harvest a bison just outside Yellowstone National Park, restoring a centuries-old tradition guaranteed by a treaty signed in 1855.

The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation are the federally recognized confederations of three Sahaptin-speaking Native American tribes who traditionally inhabited the Columbia...

The European Space Agency (ESA) conducted the first launch of the European Vega rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

The European Space Agency is a 23-member international organisation devoted to space exploration. It has its headquarters in Paris and a staff of around 3,000 people globally as of 2025. ESA was...

Kim Jong-nam, brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, is assassinated at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Kim Jong-nam was the eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. From roughly 1994 to 2001, he was considered the heir apparent to his father. He was thought to have fallen out of favor after...

Former U.S. President Donald Trump is acquitted in his second impeachment trial.

Donald John Trump is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 45th president from...

A major winter storm causes blackouts and kills at least 82 people in Texas and northern Mexico.

A crippling winter and ice storm, unofficially named Winter Storm Uri by the Weather Channel and various media outlets and government agencies, also referred to as the Great Texas Freeze or...