TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – MARCH 13
483 St. Felix begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
607 The 12th recorded passage of Halley’s Comet occurs.
624 Battle of Badr: Muhammad’s Muslim forces win significant victory over Meccan army
1519 Hernando Cortez lands in what will become Mexico.
1639 Cambridge College was renamed Harvard University.
1781 Astronomer William Herschel discovers the planet Uranus, which he names ‘Georgium Sidus,’ in honor of King George III.
1793 Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin.
1852 “Uncle Sam” cartoon appeared for the first time in N.Y. Lantern weekly.
1861 Jefferson Davis signs a bill authorizing slaves to be used as soldiers for the Confederacy.
1868 The U.S. Senate begins the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson.
1881 Czar Alexander II is assassinated when a bomb is thrown at him near his palace.
1901 Andrew Carnegie announced that he was retiring from business and that he would spend the rest of his days giving away his fortune. His net worth was estimated at $300 million.
1902 In Poland, schools were shut down across the country when students refused to sing the Russian hymn “God Protect the Czar.”
1902 Andrew Carnegie approved 40 applications from libraries for donations.
1918 Women are scheduled to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York due to a shortage of men.
1925 Tennessee passed a bill prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools.
1930 Clyde W. Tombaugh announced the discovery of the planet Pluto.
1935 A three-thousand-year-old archive is found in Jerusalem confirming biblical history.
1942 Julia Flikke of the Nurse Corps becomes the first woman colonel in the U.S. Army.
1943 German troops liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Kraków Thousands of men, women and children were murdered by the nazis or deported to extermination camps. The horrific event is portrayed in the film, Schindler’s List.
1951 Israel demands $1.5 billion in German reparations for the cost of caring for war refugees.
1974 Arab nations decide to end the oil embargo on the United States.
1980 A jury in Winamac, IN, found Ford Motor Company innocent of reckless homicide in the deaths of three young women that had been riding in a Ford Pinto.
1981 The United States plans to send 15 Green Berets to El Salvador as military advisors.
1985 Upon the death of Konstantin Chernenko, Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the new leader of the Soviet Union.
1991 Exxon pays $1 billion in fines and costs for the clean-up of the Alaskan oil spill.
1996 A man shot dead 16 children and a woman teacher in a school in Dunblane, Scotland. He then shot himself.
2012 The Encyclopaedia Britannica discontinued its print edition after 244 years.
2013 Pope Francis succeeds Pope Benedict XVI
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
