April 13th in History

Michael Dobson | April 13

The Apollo 13 command module, showing explosion damage.

Today in History

  • Constantinople falls to the Crusaders (1204)
  • Pocahontas is captured (1613)
  • Handel’s Messiah premiers (1742)
  • The first elephant ever seen in the US arrives (1796)
  • American Civil War: Fort Sumter surrenders (1861)
  • Eugene V. Debs is imprisoned for speaking out against the draft (1919)
  • The Jefferson Memorial is dedicated (1943)
  • CIA Director Allen Dulles launches MKULTRA (1953)
  • Sidney Poitier becomes the first African-American to win the Best Actor Oscar (1964)
  • An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 explodes (1970)
  • A serial murder of African-Americans takes place in Wheaton, Maryland (1975)*
  • Tiger Woods becomes the youngest golfer to win the Masters (1997)
* I was an eyewitness to this event, which is chronicled in my book The Wheaton Murders.
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Birthdays

  • Catherine de’ Medici, Queen of France (1519)
  • Guy Fawkes, gunpowder plotter (1570)
  • Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US President (1743)
  • Frank Woolworth, retailer (1852)
  • Butch Cassidy, outlaw (1866)
  • Alfred Mosher Butts, designer of Scrabble (1899)
  • Samuel Beckett, playwright (1906)
  • Harold Stassen, presidential candidate (1907)
  • Eudora Welty, author (1909)
  • Howard Keel, actor (1919)
  • Madalyn Murray O’Hair, atheist (1919)
  • Don Adams, actor (1923)
  • Stanley Donen, director (1924)
  • Orlando Letelier, Chilean politician (1932)
  • Ben Nighthorse Campbell, US politician (1933)
  • Lyle Waggoner, actor (1935)
  • Edward Fox, actor (1937)
  • Lanford Wilson, playwright (1937)
  • Al Green, singer-songwriter (1946)
  • Christopher Hitchens, writer (1949)
  • Ron Perlman, actor (1950)
  • Peabo Bryson, singer-songwriter (1951)
  • Gary Kasparov, chess player (1963)
  • Caroline Rhea, actress (1964)
  • Ricky Schroder, actor (1970)

Deaths

  • Wallace Stegner, historian (1993)
  • Robert Moon, creator of the ZIP® Code (2001)
  • Don Blasingame, baseball player, coach, and manager (2005)

Holidays and Celebrations

  • Jefferson’s Birthday (United States)
  • New Year’s Day (Cambodia)
  • Songkan (Laos)
  • Songkran (Thailand)

Informal and made-up holidays include Scrabble Day and Blame Somebody Else Day.

April 13 is the 103rd day of the year (104th in leap years). There are 262 days remaining until the end of the year.