TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: AUG 13
1521 Hernan Cortes captures the city of Tenochtitlan, Mexico, and sets it on fire.
1536 Buddhist monks from Kyōto’s Enryaku Temple set fire to 21 Nichiren temples throughout Kyoto in the Tenbun Hokke Disturbance. (Traditional Japanese date: July 27, 1536).
1642 Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovers Martian south polar cap
1680 War starts when the Spanish are expelled from Santa Fe, New Mexico, by Indians under Chief Pope.
1704 The Battle of Blenheim was fought during the War of the Spanish Succession, resulting in a victory for English and Austrian forces.
1868 A series of earthquakes killed 25,000 in Peru and Ecuador.
1881 The first African-American nursing school opens at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.
1889 The first coin-operated telephone is patented by William Gray.
1906 An all-black army unit was accused of a shooting rampage that left 1 civilian dead at Fort Brown in Brownsville, Texas. In 1972 they were all exonerated.
1918 First Woman enlists in the United States Marines
1932 Adolf Hitler refuses to serve as Franz Von Papen’s vice chancellor.
1942 The ‘Manhattan Project’ commences, under the direction of US General Leslie Groves: its aim – to deliver an atomic bomb
1942 Henry Ford unveiled his “Soybean Car.” It was a plastic-bodied car that weighed about 1000 lbs. less than a steel car.
1945 35 Jews sacrifice their lives to blow up Nazi rubber plant in Silesia
1963 A 17 year-old Buddhist monk burns himself to death in Saigon, South Vietnam.
1989 The wreckage of a plane that carried U.S. congressman Mickey Leland and others on a humanitarian mission is found on a mountain side in Ethiopia; there are no survivors.
1990 Iraq transferred $3-4 billion in bullion, currency, and other goods seized from Kuwait to Baghdad.
1993 US Court of Appeals rules Congress must save all emails.
1994 It was reported that aspirin not only helps reduce the risk of heart disease, but also helps prevent colon cancer.
1997 South Park Makes its Debut on Comedy Central
REFERENCE: HISTORY.NET, ONTHISDAY.COM, TIMEANDDATE.COM, INFOPLEASE.COM, FACTMONSTER.COM, SCOPESYS.COM, ON-THIS-DAY.COM, THEPEOPLEHISTORY.COM
