March 13

1639 – 3 years after it is founded at Cambridge Massachusetts, by the donation of half his estate and all his library, Harvard College is named after clergyman John Harvard.

1741 – As part of the “War of Jenkins’ Ear”, between Britain and Spain, British forces attempt and fail to capture the port of Cartagena in modern Columbia.

1781 – Astronomer William Herschel, using a homemade telescope in the backyard of his home in Bath, England, discovers Uranus.

1845 – Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto premieres in Leipzig

1862 – The Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves, prohibiting the military from returning escaped, or captured ‘contraband’ slaves, is passed by  Congress, effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

1930 – Astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh, using photographs taken by the 13 inch Lowell Astrograph telescope at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, discovers Pluto.

1954 – The Battle of Điện Biên Phủ begins between French forces under Christian de Castries and Viet Minh forces under Võ Nguyên Giáp

1969 – The Apollo 9 mission ends when the command module Gumdrop returns the crew safely to Earth after they test the Lunar Module Spider in Earth orbit.

1979 – The New Jewel Movement, headed by Maurice Bishop, ousts the Prime Minister of the island of Grenada, Eric Gairy, in a coup d’état.

1996 – At Dunblane Primary School near Stirling, Scotland, Thomas Hamilton, using 4 handguns, kills 16 students, 1 teacher and wounds 15 others before killing himself.

2016 – Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and al-Mourabitoun moslem terrorists attack a hotel in the Ivory Coast town of Grand-Bassam, killing 19 people and wounding 33 more before being killed themselves.
Kurdish Hawk terrorists detonate a VBIED on Atatürk Boulevard in Ankara, Turkey, killing 37 people and wounding 125 more.

2020 – In Louisville, Kentucky, Breonna Taylor is killed by return fire when police officers, with a ‘No Knock’ search warrant, forcibly enter her home and are fired on by her boyfriend who claims he believed they were burglars perpetrating a home invasion, since the officers never identified themselves