Today is the 13th day of 2025. There are 352 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1992: Serial killer Jeffrey L Dahmer pleads guilty, but insane, to 15 mutilation killings in Milwaukee, United States. He is killed by a fellow prisoner in 1994.

OTHER EVENTS

1559: Coronation of Elizabeth I of England.

1610: Galileo Galilei discovers Callisto, 4th satellite of Jupiter.

1794: US President George Washington approves a measure adding two stars and two stripes to the American flag, following the admission of Vermont and Kentucky to the union.

1813: British fleet blockades Chesapeake and Delaware bays in United States during the War of 1812.

1822: Liberal Constitution is adopted in Greece.

1849: Sikhs are defeated at Chillianwalla in India, but British suffer heavy casualties.

1888: The National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, DC, for “the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge”.

1893: Britain’s Independent Labour Party, a precursor to the current Labour Party, meets for the first time.

1898: Emile Zola publishes the manifesto J’accuse, an attack on the anti-Semitism in France that sent Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus to prison.

1915: South African troops occupy Swakopmund in German South West Africa; Earthquake in central Italy kills 30,000 people.

1929: Wyatt Earp dies in Los Angeles.

1935: Saar votes to return to Germany after being administered by France under League of Nations supervision.

1945: Soviet forces begin offensive in Silesia, Germany, now mostly part of Poland, in World War II.

1959: Belgium grants reforms in Belgian Congo following disturbances.

1963: West African Republic of Togo’s President Sylvanus Olympio is murdered by Sgt Gnassingbe Eyadema in a military coup.

1966: Robert C Weaver becomes the first black Cabinet member as he is appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development by US President Lyndon Johnson.

1967: Gnassingbe Eyadema, now a lieutenant colonel, seizes power in Togo in a bloodless coup.

1972: A group of junior officers overthrows civilian Government of Ghana in West Africa.

1976: Sarah Caldwell is first woman to conduct at NYC Metropolitan Opera House as she led orchestra in a performance of La Traviata
.

1982: An Air Florida 737 crashes into a bridge after take-off and falls into the Potomac River, killing 78 people.

1987: An employee of Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, is charged with setting a New Year’s Eve fire that killed 96 people and injured more than 140 others.

1988: Taiwanese President Chiang Ching-Kuo dies of heart attack at age 77.

1990: Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani announces the arrest of four officers and four soldiers in slayings of six Jesuit priests.

1992: Japan apologises for forcing tens of thousands of Korean women to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II.

1993: Former East German leader Erich Honecker flies to Chile as a free man after his trial for manslaughter ends because of his ill health. He dies a year later.

1994: Italian Premier Carlo Ciampi resigns, opening the way for parliamentary elections that oust the scandal-scarred parties that have dominated Italy for five decades.

1997: Two letter bombs sent to the UN bureau of an Arab-language newspaper force the evacuation of part of UN headquarters, hours after a third letter bomb explodes at the newspaper’s London offices.

1999: The chief of Brazil’s Central Bank, Gustavo Franco, unexpectedly resigns and his successor devalues the currency by eight per cent, roiling world financial markets.

2000: Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates promotes company President Steve Ballmer to chief executive officer.

2001: In a rare disclosure, China says it has punished 242 organisers of the Falun Gong spiritual movement and sent an undisclosed number of followers to labour camps during an 18-month-old crackdown.

2004: Harold Shipman, a British doctor who is believed to have killed more than 200 of his patients in Manchester, is found hanged in his prison cell. Toronto’s Tom Fitzgerald and Gary Roberts become first teammates in NHL history to play their 1,000th NHL game on the same night as the Maple Leafs beat the visiting Calgary Flames, 4-1.

2007: Two thirds of the Venus’s southern hemisphere suddenly brightened as something triggered aerosols to form at a furious rate.

2008: China’s Government reports that the country has closed more than 11,000 small coal mines as part of a two-year-old safety crackdown aimed at stemming the industry’s high death toll.

2009: After a two-year deployment in Somalia, Ethiopia hands over security duties to a Somali force. Global shipping experiences a drop in trade, as exports from South Korea dropping an annualised 30 per cent, with Taiwan and Japan experiencing a 42 per cent and 27 per cent drop respectively.

2012: Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s deals a setback to Europe’s ability to fight off a worsening debt crisis by downgrading the government debt of France, Italy, Spain and Austria. But it keeps Germany’s at the coveted AAA level. Italian cruiseliner Costa Concordia runs aground at Isola de Giglio, Italy, causing 32 deaths.

2013: A Cairo appeals court overturns Hosni Mubarak’s life sentence and orders a retrial of the former Egyptian president for failing to prevent the killing of hundreds of protesters during the 2001 uprising that toppled his regime.

2014: Israeli officials and international dignitaries bid farewell to the late Ariel Sharon at a State ceremony. 14 people are killed and seven are injured from an explosion in an illegal gambling hall in Kaili City, China.

2020: Queen Elizabeth II issues a statement saying she reluctantly supports Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wish to live a more independent life.

2021: US President Donald Trump is impeached by the US House of Representatives voting 232-197, for “incitement of insurrection”, first time in history a US President is impeached twice. World’s oldest known cave painting of an animal — a pig, 45,000 years old — is discovered in Leang Tedongnge cave, island of Sulawesi, Indonesia.

2022: Australia equals hottest temperature on record of 50.7C (123.26F) in Onslow, Western Australia. Britain’s Prince Andrew is stripped of his military titles and royal patronages by Buckingham Palace, amid continuing sexual assault allegations

2023: China reports 60,000 COVID-19-related deaths in just over a month while another report estimates 900 million people have been infected, 64 per cent of the country’s population. English actor Julian Sands is reported missing after failing to return from a hike on Mount Baldy in San Bernardino County, California.

2024: Artic blast affects large parts of the US, with 44 million people under winter weather advisory, with Montanan registering 60 degrees below zero.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Antoinette Bourignon, Flemish mystic (1616-1680); Prosper Jolyot de Crebillion, French dramatist (1674-1762); Pietro Metastasic, Italian poet (1698-1782); Charles Nelson Reilly, US actor (1931-2007); Richard Moll, US actor (1943-2023); Kevin Anderson, US actor (1960- ); Julia Louis-Dreyfus, US actress (1961- ); Orlando Bloom, British actor (1977- ); Shonda Rhimes, US TV producer (1970- )

— AP

Shonda Rhimes is born on this day in history.

Shonda Rhimes is born on this day in history. (Photo: AP)