History of the Day for:
February 13
- 1542: The fifth wife of England's King Henry VIII, Catherine Howard, was executed for adultery.
- 1633: Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before the Inquisition for professing the belief that the earth revolves around the sun.
- 1635: The oldest public school in the United States, the Boston Public Latin School, was founded.
- 1866: Jesse James held up his first bank in Liberty, Mo.
- 1867: Johann Strauss' "Blue Danube Waltz" was played for the first time at a public concert in Vienna, Austria.
- 1875: Mrs. Edna Kanouse of Watertown, Wisc., gave birth to America's first quintuplets on this day. All five of the baby boys died within two weeks.
- 1914: The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, known as ASCAP, was founded in New York City.
- 1920: The League of Nations recognized the perpetual neutrality of Switzerland; the National Negro Baseball League was organized.
- 1932: The release of "Free Eats" introduced George "Spanky" McFarland to Hal Roach's "Our Gang" series.
- 1935: A jury in Flemington, N.J., found Bruno Richard Hauptmann guilty of first-degree murder in the kidnap-death of the infant son of aviator Charles and Anne Lindbergh.
- 1937: The NFL's Boston Redskins moved to Washington.
- 1943: The Women's Marine Corps was created.
- 1945: World War II: The siege of Budapest concludes with the unconditional surrender of German and Hungarian forces to the Red Army.
- 1945: Allied planes staged a massive bombing raid on Dresden, Germany, killing over 35,000 people.
- 1961: Frank Sinatra, after spending many years signed to Capitol Records, launched his own Reprise label under Warner Bros Records.
1967: Mr. Guariglia was born! Yes, Mr. G entered the world on this day!- 1972: The Broadway show "Grease" opened in New York City and went on to become one of the longest-running shows in history.
- 1990: German reunification: An agreement is reached on a two-stage plan to reunite Germany.
- 1991: Gulf War: Two laser-guided "smart bombs" destroy the Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad. Allied forces said the bunker was being used as a military communications outpost, but over 400 Iraqi civilians inside were killed.
- 1996: The rock musical "Rent," by Jonathan Larson, opened off-Broadway.
- 2000: The last original "Peanuts" comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies.
- 2001: An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter Scale hits El Salvador, killing at least 400.
- 2004: The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announces the discovery of the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093. Astronomers named this star "Lucy" after The Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".
- 2007: Taiwan opposition leader Ma Ying-jeou resigns as the chairman of the Kuomintang party after being indicted by the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office on charges of embezzlement during his tenure as the mayor of Taipei; Ma also announces his candidacy for the 2008 presidential election.
- 2008: Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd makes a historic apology to the Indigenous Australians and the Stolen Generations.
- 2009: Unix time passed 1,234,567,890 seconds February 13, 2009 at exactly 23:31:30 (UTC).