August 13

1521 On August 13, 1521 after four months of siege, Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés captured the flower-covered Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan which was five times larger than London at the time. Cortés replaced it with Mexico City.

1587 Manteo, a Native American Croatan Indian, was the chief of a local tribe that befriended the English settlers who landed at Roanoke Island in what is now known as North Carolina. On Sunday, August 13, 1587, Manteo was christened on Roanoke Island, making him the first Native American to be baptized into the Church of England.

Warrior of the Secotan Indians in North Carolina. 1585.

1624 Cardinal Richelieu became King Louis XIII's chief minister on August 13, 1624. Cardinal de Richelieu was often known by the title of the King's "Chief Minister". As a result, he is sometimes said to be the world's first Prime Minister. Richelieu set out to secure the authority of the crown through force and political repression. He remained in office until his death in 1642; then Jules Cardinal Mazarin became chief minister.

1704 On August 13, 1704, during the War of the Spanish Succession, the armies of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and Prince Eugene of Savoy, defeated the Franco-Bavarian force in the Battle of Blenheim, ending French dominance of Europe. The first dispatch from the Duke of Marlborough announcing his victory at Bleinheim after 17 hours in the saddle, was written on the back of a tavern bill to his wife Sarah. It said "Let the Queen know, her army has had a glorious victory."

Marlborough writing the Blenheim despatch to Sarah, by Robert Alexander Hillingford

1860 Annie Oakley was born as Phoebe Anne Moses in a log cabin in rural Ohio on August 13, 1860. Young Phoebe was taught to shoot by her father, Jacob, who hunted game to help feed the family.  In her early 20s Phoebe Moses began appearing at target shooting exhibitions, where she met her future husband, Frank Butler, who was also a skilled marksman. Moses adopted the stage name Annie Oakley around 1882.

1866 Fiat S.p.A. founder Giovanni Agnelli (1866 – 1945) was born in Piedmont, North Italy on August 13, 1866. He studied at a military academy, and became a cavalry officer. In 1899 Agnelli co-founded Fiat (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino). Within a year he was the company's managing director. Agnelli was still active with Fiat at the start of the Second World War, and died soon after it ended in 1945 at the age of 79.

1876 Friedrich Nietzsche was once a friend of Richard Wagner and he lent his name to formation of Wagner societies throughout Germany to raise money to build the Bayreuth Festspielhaus or Bayreuth Festival Theatre. The opera house was first opened for the premiere of the complete four-opera cycle of Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), from August 13-17, 1876. Every summer, Wagner's operas are performed at the month-long Bayreuth Festival.

The Bayreuth Festival Hall By Rico Neitzel 

1888 The son of a Scottish minister, television pioneer John Logie Baird, was born in Helensburgh, a small coastal town in the west of Scotland on August 13, 1888. An inventor from a young age, as a boy Baird installed not only a telephone exchange in his father’s manse but also a system of electric lighting, even entangling passing traffic in the wires. He demonstrated the first wirelessly transferred image in January 1926.

1891 Ethel Roosevelt Derby, the youngest daughter and fourth child of Theodore Roosevelt was born on August 13, 1891. She was instrumental in preserving both the legacy of her father as well as the family home, "Sagamore Hill" for future generations, especially after the death of her mother Edith in 1948.

1899 The movie director Sir Alfred Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899 in Leytonstone, which is now part of London. Around the age of five, young Alfred was sent by his father to the local police station with a note asking the officer to lock him away for five minutes as punishment for behaving badly. This incident not only implanted a lifetime fear of policemen in him, but such harsh treatment and wrongful accusations would be found frequently throughout his films.

1910 On returning home from The Crimean War, the English nursing reformer Florence Nightingale was convinced that she had terminal heart disease. Prostate and apparently helpless on a couch in her London home, she conducted a huge correspondence and received many dignities, ambassadors and politicians. In reality she probably had been weakened by the Crimean fever she'd contacted. By 1896 Florence was confined to her bedroom permanently. She died of heart failure on August 13, 1910.

1913 Rustless steel (later to be called "stainless steel") was invented by chance at the Brown Firth Research Laboratories in Sheffield, England, on August 13, 1913 when, while trying to develop non-corrosive gun barrels, Harry Brearley added chromium to steel – thus boosting the city's cutlery industry. The development of the stainless steel made a cutlery set affordable for most households.

1913 Having broken away from the Ottoman Empire, the newly independent country of Albania was looking for a leader and one name that was floated was Halim Eddine, a nephew of the Turkish Sultan. German circus acrobat Otto Witte was a dead ringer for Eddine and he presented himself to the nearest outpost of Albanian troops who hailed him as their leader. Over the next five days, Witte enjoyed a harem and declared war on Montenegro before his ruse was discovered and he fled the country. 

1917 An apparition of a lady dressed in white appeared to three shepherd children several times near the Portuguese town of Fátima entrusting the youngsters with three revelations. The provincial administrator Artur Santos believing that the events were a fabrication of the church imprisoned the children on August 13, 1917. The children were threatened with a cauldron of boiling oil, but they insisted they were telling the truth. Eventually they were believed and were released.

The three Fatima children

1918 Opha Mae Johnson, who was 18 at the time, was the first woman to enlist in the United States Marine Corps on August 13, 1918. Johnson's first duties were as a clerk at Marine Corps headquarters, managing the records of other female reservists who joined after she did.

1926 Fidel Castro was born out of wedlock at his father's Cuban farm on Friday August 13, 1926. Known as a rebellious, loud, and troublesome child, Fidel Castro was sent to a Jesuit boarding school in Santiago de Cuba, where he was often teased by his wealthier classmates who called him a "peasant."  Castro became embroiled in student activism while studying law at the University of Havana  After Batista's overthrow in 1959, he established a government based on Marxist-Leninist principles.

1943 The evangelist Billy Graham married Wheaton classmate Ruth Bell (1920–2007) two months after graduating on August 13, 1943. Ruth said that Billy wanted to please God more than any man she had ever met. Ruth's parents were Presbyterian missionaries in China. Her father, L. Nelson Bell, was a general surgeon there. Graham and his wife had five children together. Ruth Graham died in 2007 after 64 years of marriage.

1946 The author H.G. Wells died of diabetes aged 79 on August 13, 1946 at home at 13 Hanover Terrace. He was working on the scenario of a film The Way the World Is Going at the time. His last words were "Go away, I'm all right". His ashes were scattered in Poole harbor, Dorset.

1960 The Central African Republic gained its independence from France on August 13, 1960. Before independence, the country was part of French Equatorial Africa. The date, August 13, 1960, is celebrated annually as the Central African Republic's Independence Day.

1961 After the division of Germany in 1949, East Berlin became the capital of East Germany and Bonn was made the provisional capital of West Germany. On August 13, 1961 the Soviet zone was sealed off by the Russians, and the Berlin Wall was built along the zonal boundary. The 96 mile Berlin Wall divided the city until it was opened in November 1989. Causes of deaths by people attempting illegal border crossings at the Berlin Wall included shooting, drowning, suffocation, and falling from a balloon.

1964 The last two executions in Britain took place on August 13, 1964. Gwynne Evans and Peter Allen were hanged for their convictions of murder. Their executions marked a significant moment in the history of capital punishment in the United Kingdom. The death penalty was eventually abolished in the UK for murder in 1969 in England and Wales, 1973 in Scotland, and 1976 in Northern Ireland.

1985 Ken Allen (1971–2000) was a Bornean orangutan at the San Diego Zoo.  He became famous for escaping from his enclosure on three occasions in 1985, the last one being on August 13, 1985. During his escapes, Ken Allen would peacefully stroll around the zoo looking at other animals and never acted aggressively.

1994 The world’s largest pancake was made in Rochdale, Manchester, England on August 13, 1994, by the Co-Operative Union, Ltd. Measuring 15.01 m (49 ft 3 in) in diameter and 2.5 cm (1 in) thick, the pancake weighed 3 tonnes (6,614 lb) and contained a staggering 2 million calories. The feat was organized by The Co-operative Union Ltd and hasn't yet been bested.

1995 Alison Hargreaves was a British mountaineer who in 1993 became the first woman to climb all six of the great north faces of the Alps in a single season. Two years later she was the first woman to climb Mount Everest without the aid of oxygen or Sherpas. She died in an avalanche on K2 on August 13, 1995.

1999 The sun plays an important role in Japanese mythology and religion as the Emperor is said to be the direct descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu. The sun-disc flag (see below) became the Japanese national flag in the Act on the National Flag and National Anthem, which was promulgated and became effective on August 13, 1999. 

2004 Julia Child's 1962 cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and television show almost single-handedly changed the way Americans cooked and ate. Her detailed printed instructions for chocolate mousse and coq au vin made those French classics possible for even a limited cook. Her wildly popular recipe for the latter was copied in millions of kitchens throughout America. Julia Child died on August 13, 2004 of kidney failure at the age of 91. Her last meal was French onion soup.