13 March History
- 483 - St. Felix begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
- 607 - The 12th recorded passage of Halley's Comet occurs.
- 1519 - Hernando Cortez lands in what will become Mexico.
- 1660 - A statute is passed limiting the sale of slaves in the colony of Virginia.
- 1777 - Congress orders its European envoys to appeal to high-ranking foreign officers to send troops to reinforce the American army.
- 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.
- 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.
- 1915 - The Germans repel a British Expeditionary Force attack at the battle of Neuve Chapelle in France.
- 1918 - Women are scheduled to march in the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York due to a shortage of men.
- 1935 - A three-thousand-year-old archive is found in Jerusalem confirming biblical history.
- 1940 - Finland capitulates conditionally to Soviet terms, but maintains its independence.
- 1941 - Hitler issues an edict calling for an invasion of the Soviet Union.
- 1942 - Julia Flikke of the Nurse Corps becomes the first woman colonel in the U.S. Army.
- 1943 - Japanese forces end their attack on the American troops on Hill 700 in Bougainville.
- 1951 - Israel demands $1.5 billion in German reparations for the cost of caring for war refugees.
- 1957 - The FBI arrests Jimmy Hoffa on bribery charges.
- 1963 - China invites Soviet Premiere Nikita Khrushchev to visit Beijing.
- 1970 - Cambodia orders Hanoi and Viet Cong troops to get out.
- 1974 - The U.S. Senate votes 54-33 to restore the death penalty.
- 1974 - Arab nations decide to end the oil embargo on the United States.
- 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.
13 March Birthdays
- 1615 - Innocent XII, Roman Catholic Pope
- 1733 - Joseph Priestly, scientist credited with the discovery of oxygen.
- 1764 - Charles Earl Grey, British Prime Minister
- 1798 - Abigail Powers Fillmore, First Lady and wife of Millard Fillmore
- 1855 - Percival Lowell, astronomer who predicted the discovery of the planet Pluto.
- 1886 - Albert William Stevens, balloonist and photographer.
- 1892 - Janet Flanner, writer ("Letter from Paris").
- 1900 - George Seferis, Greek poet.