On December 13th...

St. Lucia's Day

Links will open in a new window.

1474 Isabella became Queen of Castile and Leon.

1521 Pope Sixtus V was born.

1533 King Erik XIV of Sweden was born.

1545 The Council of Trent opened.

1553 King Henri IV of France was born.

1577 Francis Drake left England on a voyage that ultimately encircled the globe.

1636 The Massachusetts Bay Colony organized three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians.

1642 Dutch navigator Abel Tasman discovered New Zealand.

1759 The first music store in the United States opened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1769 Dartmouth College was chartered.

1784 Lexicographer Samuel Johnson died.

1791 Naval surveyor Philip Parker King was born.

1797 Poet Heinrich Heine was born.

1816 John Adamson received a patent for his dry dock.

1818 Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, was born.

1843 A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, was published.

1862 The Battle of Fredericksburg (Virginia) was fought.

1873 U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Nelson died.

1887 Alvin York, American hero of World War I, was born.

1897 Journalist Drew Pearson was born.

1903 Italo Marcioni patented the ice cream cone.

1913 Boxer Archie Moore was born.

1914 Actor Larry Parks was born.

1917 Actor John Hart was born.

1918 The U.S. Army crossed the Rhine River and entered Germany.
1918 Auto racer Bill Vukovich was born.

1920 The League of Nations established the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.

1923 Inventor Lawrence B. Sperry died.

1924 Samuel Gompers, long-time president of the American Federation of Labor, died.

1925 Actor Dick Van Dyke was born.

1929 Actor Christopher Plummer was born.

1934 Film director Richard D. Zanuck was born.

1941 Talk show host John Davidson was born.

1947 The Maine Turnpike opened to traffic.

1948 Rock singer Ted Nugent was born.

1949 Israel's Knesset voted to move the nation's capital to Jerusalem.

1954 Country musician John Anderson was born.

1955 Neurologist Egas Moniz died.

1957 Singer Morris Day was born.

1959 Archbishop Makarios III was elected the first President of Cyprus.

1961 Painter Grandma Moses died.

1963 Capital records signed a right of first refusal agreement with The Beatles.
1963 Walt Anderson, co-founder of White Castle, died.

1966 U.S. bombing of Hanoi began.

1967 Comedian Jamie Foxx was born.

1969 Arlo Guthrie released Alice's Restaurant.

1973 The World Football League granted its first franchise to Detroit.

1975 "Saturday Night Live" used a time delay for the first time, just in case host Richard Pryor couldn't restrain his normally obscene routine.

1982 An earthquake killed about 2,000 persons in Northern Yemen.
1982 Ellis Arnall, former Governor of Georgia, died.

1983 Martha Layne Collins was inaugurated as Kentucky's first female Governor.

1989 Driving Miss Daisy was released.
1989 Singer Taylor Swift was born.

1993 A fire in a textile factory in Fuzjou, China, killed 60 persons.

1995 A U.S. Federal Court ruled that cable companies must carry local stations.

2001 Fifteen persons were killed when the Indian Parliament was attacked by terrorists.

2003 Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was captured near his home town of Tikrit.

2006 The Chinese river dolphin was announced as extinct.

2006 Lamar Hunt, founder of the American Football League, died.

2012 A car bomb in Qatana, Syria, killed 16 persons and injured 12 others.

2016 Actor Alan Thicke died.

Questions or comments about this page?

This page was last updated on December 13, 2018.