This Day in History— March 13
Today is the 72nd day of 2019. There are 293 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2013: Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina is elected pope, becoming the first pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium. He chooses the name Francis.
OTHER EVENTS
1325: Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, is founded.
1639: Harvard University is named for clergyman John Harvard.
1707: Holy Roman Empire agrees to Convention of Milan whereby French troops are to leave northern Italy.
1781: The planet Uranus is discovered by Sir William Herschel just past the planet Saturn. It was the first of three planets to be sighted during the next two hundred years.
1868: The impeachment trial of US President Andrew Johnson begins in the US Senate.
1884: Using Greenwich, England as the commencement point from which all time will be measured, an international time standard is adopted throughout the United States.
1900: British forces under Frederick Roberts capture Bloemfontein, South Africa.
1925: A law goes into effect in Tennessee prohibiting the teaching of evolution.
1938: Austria is annexed by Germany a day after Nazi troops march in.
1974: The Arab nations agree to end their five-month oil embargo on sales to the US. Their sanction cripples both the American industry and economy.
1989: Christian army units and Syrian-backed Muslim militiamen shatter ceasefire in clash across Beirut’s dividing Green Line.
1991: Kuwait’s emir, Sheik Jeber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, returns from exile after his country is liberated from Iraqi occupation.
1992: A 6.2-magnitude earthquake rocks Turkey, claiming at least 570 lives.
1996: A gunman in Dunblane, Scotland, shoots to death 16 children and a teacher.
1997: A military cargo plane crashes in the mountains in north-eastern Iran, killing all 88 people on board.
1998: South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, himself once imprisoned for his political beliefs, grants amnesty to some five million South Koreans, including six elderly political prisoners.
2008: Serbia’s president dissolves parliament and calls an early election that should determine whether the country aligns itself with the European Union and other Western groups or returns to its isolationist past.
2011: The estimated death toll from Japan’s natural disasters climbs past 10,000 as authorities race to combat the threat of multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns and hundreds of thousands of people struggle to find food and water.
2012: Former News International executive Rebekah Brooks and her racehorse trainer husband Charlie are arrested in dawn raids that also netted four other suspects in the spreading phone hacking scandal.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (1741-1790); Hugo Wolf, Austrian composer (1860-1903); George Seferis, Greek poet and diplomat, Nobel literature laureate (1900-1971); Kofi Awoonor, Ghanaian poet (1935-2013); Neil Sedaka, US singer (1939- ); William H Macy, US actor (1950- ); Dana Delany, US actress (1956- ); Adam Clayton, bassist with rock group U2 (1960- )
—AP
