History of the Day for:
March 13
- 1639: Cambridge College was renamed Harvard for clergyman John Harvard.
- 1781: The planet Uranus was discovered by Sir William Herschel.
- 1852: The Uncle Sam cartoon figure made its debut in the New York Lantern weekly.
- 1868: The Senate began President Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial.
- 1878: The first collegiate golf match was played as Oxford defeated Cambridge.
- 1884: The U.S. adopted Standard Time.
- 1887: Chester Greenwood of Maine patented earmuffs.
- 1901: The 23rd president of the United States, Benjamin Harrison, died in Indianapolis.
- 1925: A law went into effect in Tennessee prohibiting the teaching of evolution.
- 1930: It was announced that the planet Pluto had been discovered.
- 1933: Banks began to re-open after a "holiday" declared by President Roosevelt.
- 1938: Famed attorney Clarence S. Darrow died in Chicago.
- 1940: The Russo-Finnish Winter War ends.
- 1943: World War II: In Bougainville, Japanese troops end their assault on American forces at Hill 700.
- 1943: The Holocaust: German forces liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Kraków.
- 1947: The Oscar nominations included foreign?made films for the first time; the Lerner and Loewe musical "Brigadoon" opened on Broadway.
- 1951: The comic strip "Dennis the Menace" appeared for the first time in 18 newspapers across the country.
- 1954: Battle of Ði?n Biên Ph?: Viet Minh forces attack the French.
- 1964: In a notorious case, 38 residents of a Queens, N.Y., neighborhood failed to respond to the cries of 28-year-old Kitty Genovese as she was being stabbed to death.
- 1969: The "Apollo Nine" astronauts splashed down, ending a mission that included the successful testing of the Lunar Module.
- 1996: A gunman burst into an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, opening fire on a class of kindergartners; he killed 16 children and one teacher before killing himself.
- 1997: India's Missionaries of Charity chooses Sister Nirmala to succeed Mother Teresa as its leader.
- 1997: The Phoenix lights are seen over Phoenix, Arizona by hundreds of people, and by millions on television.
- 2003: Human evolution: The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old footprints of an upright-walking human have been found in Italy.
- 2005: Terry Ratzmann shoots and kills six members of the Living Church of God and the minister at Sheraton Inn in Brookfield, Wisconsin before killing himself.
- 2008: Gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $1,000 per ounce for the first time.