Battle Of Resaca De La Palma

U.S. Congress declares war on Mexico

Born on This Day

Bea Arthur, Betty White & Rue McClanahan At Barnes & Noble

Bea Arthur

1922 - 2009

Comedic actress best known for playing no-nonsense women in TV hits "Maude" and "The Golden Girls."

Portrait of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria

Maria Theresa

1717 - 1780

Powerful Austrian archduchess who unified the farflung lands of the Hapsburg empire in the 18th century. Mother of Marie Antoinette.

Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder

1950 -

Singer, songwriter and musician noted for soulful high voice. Hits include "I Just Called to Say I Love You." Blind from birth.

Bea ArthurGetty Images

Maria TheresaDe Agostini via Getty Images

Stevie WonderCorbis via Getty Images

1610

MAY13

Annoyed by guests picking their teeth at the table, French Cardinal Richelieu is said to have ordered the sharp tips of his table knives rounded off. The new implements also spread butter better.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on May 13th

Mary Queen of Scots defeated

At the Battle of Langside, the forces of Mary Queen of Scots are defeated by a confederacy of Scottish Protestants under James Stewart, the regent of her son, King James VI of Scotland. During the battle, which was fought out in the southern suburbs of Glasgow, a cavalry charge routed Mary’s 6,000 Catholic troops, and […]

1:58m read

Edith Wharton writes of the war’s effect on France

“Since leaving Paris yesterday we have passed through streets and streets of such murdered houses, through town after town spread out in its last writhings,” the celebrated novelist Edith Wharton writes on May 13, 1915, from the town of Nancy, in the Argonnes region of France. “And before the black holes that were homes, along […]

2:16m read

German foreign minister protests Versailles Treaty terms

During the second week of May 1919, the recently arrived German delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference, convened in Paris after the end of the First World War, pore over their copies of the Treaty of Versailles, drawn up in the months preceding by representatives of their victorious enemies. On May 13, German foreign minister […]

Socialist party nominates “Convict 2253” for president

On May 13, 1920, the Socialist Party nominates Eugene V. Debs as its candidate for president in the upcoming November election. There’s a slight complication, though: Debs is serving a 10-year sentence at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta and isn’t due to get out until 1928. As the New York Tribune observes, “his nomination marks […]

1:42m read

Churchill announces: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”

On May 13, 1940, as Winston Churchill takes the helm as Great Britain’s new prime minister, he assures Parliament that his new policy will consist of nothing less than “to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against […]

Vice President Nixon is attacked

During a goodwill trip through Latin America, Vice President Richard Nixon’s car is attacked by an angry crowd and nearly overturned while traveling through Caracas, Venezuela. The incident was the dramatic highlight of a trip characterized by Latin American anger over some of America’s Cold War policies. By 1958, relations between the United States and […]

1:58m read

Bobby Riggs and Margaret Court face off in first “Battle of the Sexes”

On May 13, 1973, during the early years of the women’s liberation movement, tennis stars Bobby Riggs and Margaret Court face off in a $10,000 winner-take-all challenge match. The 55-year-old Riggs, a tennis champion from the late 1930s and ’40s who was notoriously skeptical of women’s talents on the tennis court, branded the contest a […]

2:14m read

Pope John Paul II shot

Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded.

5:52m read

Philadelphia police drop bomb on MOVE headquarters, killing 11

On May 13, 1985 Philadelphia police begin evacuating people from their Osage Avenue homes in order to prepare for an operation against MOVE, a Black separatist group that had assembled a large arsenal. By the end of the botched confrontation, the police drop a bomb, leveling a city block, killing 11 people and incinerating 61 […]

1:36m read

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