On April 13th...

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1598 The Edict of Nantes granted political rights to Huguenots in France.

1640 The English "Short Parliament" was formed.

1741 The Royal Military Academy was formed at Woolwich, England.

1743 Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States, was born.

1748 Inventor Joseph Bramah was born.

1796 Napoleon Bonaparte's forces defeated the allied armies of Austria and the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont at Millesimo, Italy.

1829 The English Emancipation Act granted freedom of religion to Catholics.

1852 Merchant Frank Winfield Woolworth was born.

1860 The first Pony Express rider arrived in Sacramento, California.

1861 Fort Sumter surrendered to the Confederates.

1863 The Hospital for Ruptured & Crippled in New York City opened, becoming the world's first orthopedic hospital.

1865 Raleigh, North Carolina, was captured by Union forces.

1866 Bank and train robber Butch Cassidy was born.

1868 British and Indian troops captured Magdala and the Ethiopian Emperor committed suicide, ending the Abyssinian War.

1869 George Westinghouse patented the steam power brake.

1870 The Metropolitan Museum of Art was established in New York City, New York.

1873 Sixty blacks were massacred in Grant Parish, Louisiana.

1882 The Anti-Semitic League was formed in Prussia.

1883 Prospector Alfred Packer was convicted of manslaughter.

1902 J. C. Penney opened his first store, in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

1904 The Russian battleship Petropavlovsk struck a mine off Port Arthur, China, and sank, killing about 700 men.

1909 The Albanian First Army seized the Parliament building and the telegraph office in Constantinople, Turkey.

1912 The Royal Flying Corps (now the Royal Air Force) was formed.

1918 Fire killed 28 mental patients at the Oklahoma State Hospital.

1919 British troops opened fire on demonstrators in Amritsar, India, killing 350.
1919 The Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea was established.
1919 Atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair was born.

1922 Julius Nyerere, the first President of Tanzania, was born.

1926 Actor Don Adams was born.

1927 The Ottawa Senators defeated the Boston Bruins for the Stanley Cup.

1933 The New York Rangers defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs for the Stanley Cup.
1933 U. S. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell was born.

1935 Actor Lyle Waggoner was born.

1936 Ioannis Metaxas proclaimed himself dictator of Greece.

1939 Actor Paul Sorvino was born.

1940 The New York Rangers defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs for the Stanley Cup.

1941 Japan and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact.
1941 Astronomer Annie Jump Cannon died.

1943 The Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D. C.

1944 The Montreal Canadiens defeated the Chicago Blakhawks for the Stanley Cup.

1945 Actor Tony Dow was born.

1946 Eddie Klepp, a white pitcher for the Negro League's Cleveland Buckeyes, was barried from the field in Birmingham, Alabama.
1946 Singer Al Green was born.

1949 The Minnesota Lakers defeated the Washington Capitols for the NBA Championship.

1950 Actor Ron Perlman was born.

1954 Hank Aaron played in his first Major League regular season game.

1957 Fourteen elderly men and women were killed when a flash electrical fire destroyed a 220-year-old rest home in Pointe-aux-Trembles, Quebec, Canada.
1957 The Boston Celtics defeated the St. Louis Hawks for the NBA Championship.
1957 The film 12 Angry Men was released.

1958 The St. Louis Hawks won their first National Basketball Association championship by defeating the Boston Celtics.
1958 Van Cliburn became the first American to win the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Russia.

1959 Discoverer II was launched into a polar orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

1960 Transit 1-B, a 265-pound "space lighthouse," was launched into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

1961 The United Nations General Assembly condemned South Africa's apartheid policies.

1963 Chess player Garry Kasparov was born.

1969 George Archer won the Masters Golf Tournament.

1970 Billy Casper won the Masters Golf Tournament.
1970 Actor Rick Schroder was born.

1975 The government of Chad was overthrown by a military coup.
1975 Christian Falangists killed 27 Palestinians in Lebanon.
1975 Jack Nicklaus won the Masters Golf Tournament.
1975 Actor Larry Parks died.

1976 The U. S. Treasury began issuing $2 bills to mark the nation's Bicentennial.

1979 A bus and a rice truck collided head-on in Bagkok, Thailand, killing 22 persons.

1980 Seve Ballesteros won the Masters Golf Tournament.

1985 Katrin Dörre won the first women's World Cup Marathon with a time of 2:33.30.

1986 Jack Nicklaus won the Masters Golf Tournament.

1987 Portugal signed an agreement to return Macau to China in 1999.

1992 A magnitude 5.5 earthquake struck the Netherlands.
1992 Chicago, Illinois', downtown tunnel system flooded.

1994 The presidential guard chopped 1,200 church members to death in Kigali, Rwanda.

1997 Tiger Woods won the Masters Golf Tournament.

1999 Willi Stoph, former Premier of East Germany, died.

2002 Pedro Carmona resigned as Interim President of Venezuela.

2003 Mike Weir won the Masters Golf Tournament.

2008 Trevor Immelman won the Masters Golf Tournament.

2014 Bubba Watson won the Masters Golf Tournament.

2015 A migrant ship sank off the coast of Libya, killing about 400 people.

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This page was last updated on April 13, 2018.