On September 13th...

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1224 Francis of Assisi was afflicted with stigmata.

1503 Michelangelo began work on his statue of David.

1598 King Philip II of Spain died.

1755 Inventor Oliver Evans was born.

1759 British General James Wolfe was killed at the Battle of Quebec.

1788 New York City, New York, became the first official capital of the United States.

1791 King Louis XVI of France accepted a constitution.

1792 French Admiral François Joseph Paul, Comte De Grasse was born.

1813 Civil War General John Sedgwick was born.

1814 The bombardment of Fort McHenry began.

1819 The SS Savannah arrived at St. Petersburg, Russia.

1824 U.S. Army General Ambrose Burnside was born.

1849 Tom McCoy became the first prize fight fatality in the United States.

1851 Doctor and medical researcher Walter Reed was born.

1857 Chocolate company founder Milton Hershey was born.

1860 U.S. General John Joseph Pershing was born.

1861 The Union frigate Colorado sank the privateer Judah off Pensacola, Florida, in the first naval battle of the Civil War.

1874 Composer Arnold Schönberg was born.

1876 Author Sherwood Anderson was born.

1881 Lewis Latimer patented an electric lamp with a carbon filament.

1898 Hannibal Goodwin patented celluloid photographic film.

1903 Actress Claudette Colbert was born.

1906 Alberto Santos-Dumont made the first heavier-than-air flight in Europe.

1925 Xavier University opened in New Orleans, Louisiana.

1913 Aviator Aurel Vlaicu was killed while trying to become the first person to fly an airplane over the Carpathian Mountains.

1916 Author Roald Dahl was born.

1925 Singer Mel Tormé was born.

1931 Actress Barbara Bain was born.

1933 Elizabeth McCombs became the first female member of the New Zealand Parliament.

1937 Cartoonist Don Bluth was born.
1937 Television producer Fred Silverman was born.

1938 Alexander Cartwright was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

1940 Buckingham Palace was damaged by German bombs.

1941 Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez was born.

1944 Actress Jacqueline Bisset was born.
1944 Singer Peter Cetera was born.

1948 Margaret Chase Smith was elected to the U.S. Senate by Maine.
1948 Actress Nell Carter was born.

1949 The Ladies Pro Golf Association of America was formed.

1955 George de Mestral was granted a patent for what is now known as Velcro.

1956 IBM introduced the first computer with a magnetic disk storage unit, the RAMAC 305.

1959 Luna 2 became the first man-made object to impact the Moon.
1959 Actress Jean Smart was born.

1967 Michael Johnson, Olympic and professional sprinter, was born.

1969 Film director Tyler Perry was born.

1970 The Japan World Exposition (EXPO 70) closed.
1970 Gary Muhrcke won the first ever New York City Marathon, with a time of 2:31:38.

1971 A group of men known as the "White House Plumbers" burglarized a psychiatrist's office to find files on Daniel Ellsberg.
1971 Eleven guards and 31 prisoners died in a take over of Attica State Prison in New York.
1971 The World Hockey Association was formed.

1972 "The Waltons" premiered on CBS-TV.

1974 "The Rockford Files" premiered on NBC-TV.

1977 "Soap" became the first television series to air a viewer discretion warning.
1977 Singer Fiona Apple was born.

1980 Actor Ben Savage was born.

1985 Nintendo introduced Super Mario Bros.

1996 Rapper Tupac Shakur died.

1998 George C. Wallace, four-time Governor of Alabama and three-time candidate for President, died.

1993 Queens, New York, began mandatory recycling.

1999 A bomb killed at least 119 people in Moscow, Russia.
1999 The Denver Broncos retired John Elway's #7 jersey.

2008 Hurricane Ike made landfall on the Texas coast.

2013 Thirty persons were killed by a mosque bombing attack in Baghdad, Iraq.

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This page was last updated on September 13, 2018.