September 13

1229 – Ögedei Khan, the 3rd son of Genghis Kahn, is proclaimed Khagan of the Mongol Empire

1501 – Italian Renaissance: Michelangelo begins work on his statue of David.

1541 – After three years of exile, John Calvin returns to Geneva to begin his reformation of the church

1609 – Henry Hudson reaches the river that would later be named after him – the Hudson River.

1788 – The Philadelphia Convention sets the date for the first presidential election in the United States, and New York City becomes the nation’s temporary capital.

1814 – Observing, through the night, the battle against the British attempt to capture Baltimore, Francis Scott Key composes his poem “Defence of Fort McHenry“, which is later set to music and becomes the national anthem.

1847 – During the final assault on Chapultepec Castle, 6 Mexican military cadets known as Niños Héroes refuse to surrender and die in its defense as U.S. troops under General Winfield Scott capture Mexico City

1862 –  At the Best Farm, outside Frederick, Maryland, Union Corporal Barton W. Mitchell of the 27th Indiana Volunteers finds a copy of General Robert E. Lee’s Special Order 191, detailing upcoming battle plans. Union forces use this knowledge to good effect in engaging Confederate forces at Antietam and the South Mountain area in Maryland. Later, author Harry Turtledove writes an alternate history novel – How Few Remain – where the plans are not intercepted, and how that would likely have changed not just the outcome of the war, and U.S./C.S. history, but world history.

1898 – Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film.

1899 – Henry Bliss is the first person in the United States to be killed in an automobile accident.

1942 – On the second day of the Battle of Edson’s Ridge in the Guadalcanal Campaign, U.S. Marines successfully defeat attacks, with heavy losses inflicted on the Japanese forces.

1948 – Margaret Chase Smith is elected United States senator becoming the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.

1956 – The IBM 305 RAMAC computer is introduced, the first commercial computer to use disk storage.

1971 – New York State police and National Guardsmen storm Attica Prison to quell a prison revolt.

1977 – General Motors introduces Diesel engines for the first time in passenger vehicle models Delta 88, Oldsmobile 98, and Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser.

1993 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat sign the Oslo Accords at the White House granting limited Palestinian autonomy.

1998 – Former Alabama Governor George Wallace dies at Jackson Hospital in Montgomery, Alabama.

2001 – Civilian aircraft traffic resumes in the United States after the September 11 attacks.

2005 – Former President of Columbia, Julio César Turbay Ayala dies in Bogotá, Colombia

2008 – Hurricane Ike makes landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast of the United States, killing 214 people and causing $38 Billion in damage to Galveston Island, Houston, and surrounding areas.

2018 – 1 person is killed, 25 are injured, and 40 homes are destroyed when excessive pressure in natural gas lines owned by Columbia Gas of Massachusetts causes fires and explosions in the Merrimack Valley, in Massachusetts