March 13




0483 - St. Felix III began his reign as Pope.

0607 - The 12th recorded passage of Halley's Comet occurred.

1519 - Cortez landed in Mexico.

1639 - Harvard University was named for clergyman John Harvard.

1660 - A statute was passed limiting the sale of slaves in the colony of Virginia.

1777 - The U.S. Congress ordered its European envoys to appeal to high-ranking foreign officers to send troops to reinforce the American army.

1781 - Sir William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus.

1852 - The New York "Lantern" newspaper published the first "Uncle Sam cartoon". It was drawn by Frank Henry Bellew.

1861 - Jefferson Davis signed a bill authorizing slaves to be used as soldiers for the Confederacy.

1868 - The U.S. Senate began the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson.

1877 - Chester Greenwood patented the earmuff.

1878 - The first collegiate golf match was played between Oxford and Cambridge.

1881 - Tsar Alexander II was assassinated when a bomb was thrown at him near his palace.

1884 - Standard time was adopted throughout the U.S.

1900 - In South Africa, British Gen. Roberts took Bloemfontein.

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.

1908 - The people of Jerusalem saw an automobile for the first time. The owner was Charles Glidden of Boston.

1911 - The U.S. Supreme Court approved corporate tax law.

1915 - The Germans repelled a British expeditionary force attack in France.

1918 - Women were scheduled to march in the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York due to a shortage of men due to wartime.

1925 - A law in Tennessee prohibited the teaching of evolution.

1928 - The St. Francis Dam in California burst and killing 400 people.

1930 - It was announced that the planet Pluto had been discovered by scientist Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory.

1933 - U.S. banks began to re-open after a "holiday" that had been declared by President Roosevelt.

1935 - Three-thousand-year-old archives were found in Jerusalem confirming some biblical history.

1940 - The war between Russia and Finland ended with the signing of a treaty in Moscow.

1941 - Adolf Hitler issued an edict calling for an invasion of the U.S.S.R.

1942 - Julia Flikke of the Nurse Corps became the first woman colonel in the U.S. Army.

1943 - Japanese forces ended their attack on the American troops on Hill 700 in Bougainville.

1946 - Reports from Iran indicated that Soviet tanks units were stationed 20 miles from Tehran.

1946 - Premier Tito seized wartime collaborator General Draja Mikhailovich in a cave in Yugoslavia.

1951 - Israel demanded $1.5 billion in German reparations for the cost of caring for war refugees.

1951 - The comic strip "Dennis the Menace" appeared for the first time in newspapers across the country.

1957 - Jimmy Hoffa was arrested by the FBI on bribery charges.

1963 - China invited Soviet President Khrushchev to visit Peking.

1964 - 38 residents of a New York City neighborhood failed to respond to the screams of Kitty Genovese, 28 years old, as she was stabbed to death.

1969 - The Apollo 9 astronauts returned to Earth after the conclusion of a mission that included the successful testing of the Lunar Module.

1970 - A group calling itself "Revolutionary Force 9" took credit for 3 bombs that exploded in New York City.

1970 - Cambodia ordered Hanoi and Viet Cong troops to leave.

1970 - Digital Equipment Corp. introduced the PDP-11 minicomputer.

1972 - "The Merv Griffin Show" debuted in syndication for Metromedia Television.

1974 - The U.S. Senate voted 54-33 to restore the death penalty.

1974 - An embargo imposed by Arab oil-producing countries was lifted.

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.

1988 - The board of trustees off Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, chose I. King Jordan to be its first deaf president. The college is a liberal arts college for the hearing-impaired.

1990 - The U.S. lifted economic sanctions against Nicaragua.

1991 - Exxon paid $1 billion in fines and for the clean-up of the Alaskan oil spill.

1992 - An earthquake in eastern Turkey killed more than 1,000.

1995 - The first United Nations World Summit on Social Development concluded in Copenhagen, Denmark.

1997 - Sister Nirmala was chosen by India's Missionaries of Charity to succeed Mother Teresa as leader of the Catholic order.

1998 - Sgt. Maj. Gene McKinney, at one time the U.S. Army's top enlisted man, was acquitted of pressuring military women for sex. He was convicted of trying to persuade the chief accuser to lie. He was reprimanded and had his rank reduced.

2002 - Fox aired "Celebrity Boxing." Tonya Harding beat Paula Jones, Danny Banaduce beat Barry Williams and Todd Bridges defeated Vanilla Ice.

2003 - Japan sent a destroyer to the Sea of Japan amid reports that North Korea was planning to test an intermediate-range ballistic missile.

2003 - A report in the journal "Nature" reported that scientists had found 350,000-year-old human footprints in Italy. The 56 prints were made by three early, upright-walking humans that were descending the side of a volcano.