Friday, 13th March 2026 in Lisbon

13th March in the Stars – Star Sign Pisces

Today, the zodiac sign Pisces celebrates its birthday.

Personality Profile

Personality People born on March 13th blend Pisces' gentle sensitivity with emotional depth enhanced by lunar influence. They are dreamers yet possess inner strength and remarkable intuitive power. These individuals navigate between imagination and reality with notable emotional intelligence.

Strengths & Weaknesses Their strengths include empathy, artistic creativity, and spiritual understanding. They grasp emotional nuances quickly and provide stability to others. Weaknesses stem from heightened sensitivity and tendencies toward rumination or blurred boundaries.

Love In relationships, these natives display profound emotional devotion and romantic depth. They seek spiritual connection and emotional intimacy beyond surface contact. Their loyalty is impressive, yet they require partners who honor their sensitivity.

Caree & Finance Careers in art, healing, psychology, or spiritual fields suit them well. Their intuitive gifts make them valuable counselors and creatives. Financial security improves when emotional and material goals align meaningfully.

Health These people benefit from water therapies, creative expression, and meditation for emotional balance. Chronic stress manifests quickly physically—rest is essential. Mental health requires regular self-reflection and boundary-setting.

That night, the moon was in its first quarter phase.

Chinese year of the Horse (Fire).

Fun Facts About 13th March

Name Days in Your Language: Rod, Rodd, Roderica, Roderick, Rodney, Rodrigo, Rory, Solomon

Someone born on this day would be just 85 days old today — roughly 2,044 hours, 122,680 minutes, or 7,360,836 seconds spent on Earth so far.

It's the 72. day of the year. In 2026, 13th March falls on a Friday.

There are 293 days still to come.

We’re currently in Week 11 — the year marches on.

Famous Birthdays on 13th March

On this day, 174 notable people were born on 13th March — spanning from 1372 to 2004. From world leaders to artists and scientists, discover who shares this birthday.

13/03/2004

Coco Gauff, American tennis player

Cori Dionne "Coco" Gauff is an American professional tennis player. She has a career-high ranking of world No. 2 in singles and of world No. 1 in doubles by the WTA. Gauff has won 11 career singles titles, including two majors at the 2023 US Open and 2025 French Open, as well as the 2024 WTA Finals. She has also won 10 doubles titles, including the 2024 French Open, partnering with Kateřina Siniaková.

13/03/2002

Frank Gore Jr., American football player

Franklin Gore Jr. is an American professional football running back for the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Southern Miss Golden Eagles and was signed by the Bills in 2024 as an undrafted free agent. He is the son of former NFL running back Frank Gore.

13/03/2001

Beomgyu, South Korean singer-songwriter

Choi Beom-gyu, known mononymously as Beomgyu, is a South Korean singer and songwriter. He is a member of the South Korean boy band Tomorrow X Together, formed by Big Hit Entertainment in 2019. He released his first solo song "Panic" on March 27, 2025.

Thomas Dearden, Australian rugby league player

Thomas Dearden is an Australian professional rugby league footballer who captains and plays as a five-eighth or halfback for the North Queensland Cowboys in the National Rugby League

13/03/1998

Jay-Roy Grot, Dutch footballer

Jay-Roy Jornell Grot is a professional footballer who plays as a striker or right winger for Danish Superliga club OB. Born in the Netherlands, he plays for the Suriname national team.

Jack Harlow, American rapper, singer-songwriter, and actor

Jackman Thomas Harlow is an American rapper and singer. He began his recording career in 2015, and released several EPs and mixtapes until signing with Don Cannon and DJ Drama's record label Generation Now, an imprint of Atlantic Records in 2018.

13/03/1997

Pyper America, American model, actress, and musician

Pyper America Whitworth is an American model, actress, and musician.

Landry Shamet, American basketball player

Landry Michael Shamet is an American professional basketball player for the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the Wichita State Shockers and was selected 26th overall by the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2018 NBA draft. He has also played for the Los Angeles Clippers, Brooklyn Nets, Phoenix Suns, and Washington Wizards.

13/03/1996

Brayden Point, Canadian ice hockey player

Brayden Point is a Canadian professional ice hockey player who is a centre for the Tampa Bay Lightning of the National Hockey League (NHL). The Lightning selected Point in the third round, 79th overall of the 2014 NHL entry draft. Point won the Stanley Cup back-to-back with the Lightning in 2020 and 2021, leading the playoffs in goal-scoring both times, including scoring the Stanley Cup-clinching goal of the 2020 Stanley Cup Final.

13/03/1995

Mikaela Shiffrin, American skier

Mikaela Pauline Shiffrin is an American alpine skier. Shiffrin is the most decorated American alpine skier in World Championships history. She has the most World Cup wins of any alpine skier in history and is the only one to have reached the milestone of 100 victories. She is a three-time Olympic gold medalist, four-time Olympic medalist, an eight-time World Championships gold medalist, a six-time overall World Cup champion, and a nine-time winner of the World Cup slalom discipline title. Shiffrin, at 18 years and 345 days, became the youngest slalom gold medalist in Olympic history in 2014.

Jang Su-jeong, South Korean tennis player

Jang Su-jeong is a South Korean professional tennis player. On 11 July 2022, she achieved a career-high singles ranking of world No. 114. On 22 May 2023, she peaked at No. 82 in the WTA doubles rankings.

13/03/1994

Gerard Deulofeu, Spanish footballer

Gerard Deulofeu Lázaro is a Spanish professional footballer who plays as a forward or winger. He is currently a free agent.

Mohammed Siraj, Indian cricketer

Mohammed Siraj is an Indian international cricketer who plays as a right-arm fast bowler for the India national team. He plays for Gujarat Titans in the Indian Premier League and Hyderabad in domestic cricket. He was a part of the squad which won the 2023 Asia Cup and was the Player of the Match in the final. Siraj was also a member of the team that won the 2024 and 2026 T20 World Cups. He is also an honorary Deputy Superintendent of Police in Hyderabad.

13/03/1993

Tyrone Mings, English footballer

Tyrone Deon Mings is an English professional footballer who plays as a centre-back for Premier League club Aston Villa.

13/03/1992

Lucy Fry, Australian actress

Lucy Elizabeth Fry is an Australian actress. She is known for portraying Zoey in Lightning Point, Lyla in Mako: Island of Secrets, and Lissa Dragomir in the film Vampire Academy. Fry was also cast in Hulu's eight part miniseries 11.22.63 as Marina Oswald, wife of Lee Harvey Oswald, and played the lead in the 2016 Australian horror television series Wolf Creek and Tikka in the 2017 Netflix film Bright. Since 2019, she has portrayed Stella Gigante in the Epix series Godfather of Harlem.

George MacKay, English actor

George Andrew J. MacKay is an English actor. He began his career as a child actor in Peter Pan (2003). He had starring roles in the British war drama Private Peaceful (2012), the romantic film How I Live Now (2013), For Those in Peril (2013), for which he won a BAFTA Scotland Award, and Marrowbone (2017). He gained wider recognition for his leading role in the war film 1917 (2019) and won a British Independent Film Award for his performance in Femme (2023).

Ozuna, Puerto Rican singer-songwriter and rapper

Juan Carlos Ozuna Rosado , known professionally as Ozuna, is a Puerto Rican singer. Five of his studio albums have topped the Billboard Top Latin Albums chart, with Aura (2018) reached number seven on the Billboard 200. His musical style is primarily defined as reggaeton and Latin trap, although he has collaborated with several artists from different genres and his music takes influences from a wide variety of genres, including pop, rock, hip hop, R&B, reggae, bachata, dembow, and electronic, amongst others.

L, South Korean actor and singer

Kim Myung-soo, known professionally as L (Korean: 엘), is a South Korean singer and actor. He debuted as a vocalist of boy band Infinite in 2010 and its sub-group Infinite F in 2014.

13/03/1991

Daniel Greig, Australian speed skater

Daniel Greig is an Australian speed skater. He was selected for Australia as a speed skater during the 2014 Winter Olympics for the men's 500, 1000 and 1500 m events. During the 2014 World Sprint Speed Skating Championships he won a bronze medal.

Tristan Thompson, American basketball player

Tristan Trevor James Thompson is a Canadian–American professional basketball player who is a free agent. Thompson played one season of college basketball for the Texas Longhorns before being selected by the Cleveland Cavaliers as the fourth overall pick in the 2011 NBA draft. He won an NBA championship with the Cavaliers in 2016 and has also played for the Boston Celtics, Sacramento Kings, Indiana Pacers, Chicago Bulls, and Los Angeles Lakers. Thompson also represented Canada in international competitions.

13/03/1990

Anicet Abel, Malagasy footballer

Anicet Abel Andrianantenaina is a Malagasy retired professional footballer who played as a midfielder.

Marcell Dareus, American football player

Marcell Dareus is an American former professional football player who was a defensive tackle in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Alabama Crimson Tide, where he was named defensive MVP of the 2010 BCS National Championship Game. Dareus was selected by the Buffalo Bills third overall in the 2011 NFL draft. He also played for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

13/03/1989

Holger Badstuber, German footballer

Holger Felix Badstuber is a German former professional footballer who primarily played as a centre-back.

Peaches Geldof, English columnist, television personality, and model (died 2014)

Peaches Honeyblossom Geldof was an English columnist, television personality, and model.

Sandy León, Venezuelan baseball player

Sandy David León López is a Venezuelan professional baseball catcher for the Atlanta Braves of Major League Baseball (MLB). He has previously played in MLB for the Washington Nationals, Boston Red Sox, Cleveland Indians/Guardians, Miami Marlins, Minnesota Twins, and Texas Rangers. He has also played for the Colombia national baseball team.

Marko Marin, German footballer

Marko Marin is a German former professional footballer who played as an attacking midfielder and winger. He was known for his acceleration, dribbling, agility, creativity, versatility, technical skill and playmaking ability. Currently, he is the technical director at Red Star Belgrade.

Robert Wickens, Canadian racing driver

Robert Tyler Wickens is a Canadian racing driver from Guelph, Ontario, driving in the Sprint Cup of the IMSA SportsCar Championship for DXDT Racing. In 2009 he finished in second place in the FIA Formula Two Championship, and in 2010 he was runner-up in the GP3 Series. In his return to Formula Renault 3.5, where he competed in 2008, he won the 2011 season championship with Carlin Motorsport, with backing of Marussia. Wickens then left the series to race in the DTM for the HWA Team.

13/03/1988

Furdjel Narsingh, Dutch footballer

Furdjel Robby Narsingh is a Dutch professional footballer who plays as a winger. He formerly played for AZ, Volendam, Telstar, PEC Zwolle, SC Cambuur, De Graafschap and Ararat-Armenia.

13/03/1987

Marco Andretti, American race car driver

Marco Michael Andretti is an American retired auto racing driver who competed in the IndyCar Series from 2006 to 2025. He is the grandson of racing legend Mario Andretti, the son of CART champion Michael Andretti, and the cousin of Trans-Am Series driver Adam Andretti.

Andreas Beck, German footballer

Andreas Beck is a former professional footballer who played as a right-back. Born in the Soviet Union, he represented Germany at youth and senior levels.

13/03/1986

Neil Wagner, South African-New Zealand cricketer

Neil Wagner is a New Zealand former Test cricketer who played for New Zealand and Northern Districts cricket teams. He played for Northerns until 2007/08 and Otago between 2008 and 2018. Wagner was a member of the New Zealand team that won the 2019–2021 ICC World Test Championship. On 27 February 2024, he announced his retirement from international cricket.

13/03/1985

Alcides, Brazilian footballer

Alcides Eduardo Mendes de Araújo Alves, known simply as Alcides, is a Brazilian former professional footballer who played as either a right back or a central defender.

Emile Hirsch, American actor

Emile Davenport Hirsch is an American actor. His portrayal of Chris McCandless in Into the Wild (2007) earned him acclaim and multiple award nominations.

13/03/1984

Geeta Basra, Indian actress

Geeta Basra is an English former actress who has appeared in Bollywood films.

13/03/1983

Kaitlin Sandeno, American swimmer

Kaitlin Sandeno-Hogan is an American former competition swimmer who is an Olympic gold medalist, world champion and former world record-holder. Sandeno was a member of the American team that set a new world record in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay at the 2004 Summer Olympics. She was the general manager of DC Trident which is a part of the International Swimming League for 3 seasons.

13/03/1982

Izi Castro Marques, Brazilian basketball player

Iziane "Izi" Castro Marques is a retired Brazilian professional basketball player. Castro Marques played for the Brazil national team and played for the Miami Sol, Phoenix Mercury, Seattle Storm, Atlanta Dream, Washington Mystics, and Connecticut Sun of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). Castro Marques also played overseas in France, Brazil, Spain, Latvia, Turkey, Poland, and Russia. Following her retirement, Castro Marques became the technical director of Sampaio Basquete of the Brazilian Women's Basketball League.

Nicole Ohlde, American basketball player

Nicole Katherine Ohlde is an American former professional basketball player who played for the Minnesota Lynx, Phoenix Mercury and Tulsa Shock of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA).

13/03/1980

Caron Butler, American basketball player

James Caron Butler is an American professional basketball coach and former player who is an assistant coach for the Miami Heat of the National Basketball Association. He was the 2002 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Player of the Year while playing for the Connecticut Huskies. During his 14-year NBA career, Butler played for the Miami Heat, Los Angeles Lakers, Washington Wizards, Dallas Mavericks, Los Angeles Clippers, Milwaukee Bucks, Oklahoma City Thunder, Detroit Pistons, and Sacramento Kings. He is a two-time NBA All-Star.

Brad Watts, Australian rugby league player

Brad Watts is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer who competed in the National Rugby League. He played for the Melbourne Storm from 1999 to 2001, then for the South Sydney Rabbitohs from 2002 to 2005. Watts also played with the Widnes Vikings club in the then Super League in 2005. He usually played fullback, but later moved to halfback.

13/03/1979

Johan Santana, Venezuelan baseball player

Johan Alexander Santana Araque is a Venezuelan former professional baseball starting pitcher. Santana pitched in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Minnesota Twins from 2000 to 2007 and for the New York Mets from 2008 to 2012. A two-time Cy Young Award winner with the Twins, Santana is a four-time All-Star and earned a pitching triple crown in 2006. On June 1, 2012, Santana pitched the first no-hitter in New York Mets history against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Cédric Van Branteghem, Belgian sprinter

Cédric Marie Carlos Thérèse Van Branteghem is a former Belgian sprinter who specialized in the 400 metres.

13/03/1978

Tom Danielson, American cyclist

Thomas Danielson is an American retired professional road racing cyclist who competed professionally between 2002 and 2015 for the Mercury Cycling Team (2002), the Saturn Cycling Team (2003), Fassa Bortolo (2004), Discovery Channel (2005–2007) and Cannondale–Garmin (2008–2015). He had been suspended twice for doping in his career.

13/03/1976

Troy Hudson, American basketball player and rapper

Troy Elderon Hudson is an American former professional basketball point guard. He played 11 years in the National Basketball Association (NBA) after going undrafted in 1997. He averaged a career-high 14.2 points per game with the Minnesota Timberwolves in the 2002–03 season.

Danny Masterson, American actor and producer

Daniel Peter Masterson is an American actor. He portrayed Steven Hyde in That '70s Show (1998–2006), Milo Foster in Men at Work (2012–2014), and Jameson "Rooster" Bennett in The Ranch (2016–2018).

13/03/1975

Mark Clattenburg, English football referee

Mark Clattenburg is an English former professional football referee.

13/03/1974

James Brinkley, Scottish cricketer

James Brinkley is a Scottish former cricketer. He is a right-handed batsman and a right-arm medium-fast bowler. He played five One Day Internationals in May 1999. He played List A cricket until 2004 and participated in the 2001 ICC Trophy.

Thomas Enqvist, Swedish tennis player and sportscaster

Thomas Karl Johan Enqvist is a Swedish tennis coach and a former professional player. He reached the final of the 1999 Australian Open and won a total of 19 singles titles, including three Masters titles. He has a career high ATP world singles ranking of No. 4, achieved on 15 November 1999.

13/03/1973

Edgar Davids, Surinamese-Dutch footballer and manager

Edgar Steven Davids is a Dutch former professional footballer. Davids was nicknamed "The Pitbull" because of his marking ability, aggression, and hard tackling style of play.

David Draiman, American singer-songwriter

David Michael Draiman is an American heavy metal singer. Noted for his distorted baritone voice and percussive singing style, he has been the lead vocalist of Disturbed since 1996. He has written some of the band's most successful singles, such as "Stupify", "Down with the Sickness", "Indestructible", and "Inside the Fire". In 2006, he was ranked at No. 42 on the Hit Parader list of "Top 100 Metal Vocalists of All Time". During Disturbed's hiatus from 2011 to 2015, he worked on an industrial metal project with Geno Lenardo, which was later named Device. They released one self-titled album in 2013. Disturbed returned with the album Immortalized in 2015, Evolution in 2018, and Divisive in 2022.

Bobby Jackson, American basketball player and coach

Bobby Jackson is an American professional basketball coach and former player, who is an assistant coach for the Sacramento Kings of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for Western Nebraska Community College and the University of Minnesota. In the NBA, he played for several teams over twelve seasons, from 1997 to 2009.

13/03/1972

Common, American rapper and actor

Lonnie Rashid Lynn, known professionally as Common, is an American rapper, actor and activist. The recipient of three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award, he signed with the independent label Relativity Records at the age of 20. The label released his first three studio albums: Can I Borrow a Dollar? (1992), Resurrection (1994) and One Day It'll All Make Sense (1997). He maintained an underground following into the late 1990s, and achieved mainstream success through his work with the Black music collective Soulquarians.

Trent Dilfer, American football player, coach, and analyst

Trent Farris Dilfer is an American football coach and former quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 14 seasons. Dilfer achieved his greatest professional success as the starting quarterback of the Baltimore Ravens during their Super Bowl-winning season in 2000. Following his playing career, he served as the head coach for the UAB Blazers from 2023 to 2025.

13/03/1971

Annabeth Gish, American actress

Annabeth Gish is an American actress. She played roles in the films Shag, Hiding Out, Mystic Pizza, SLC Punk!, The Last Supper and Double Jeopardy. On television, she played Special Agent Monica Reyes on The X-Files, Elizabeth Bartlet Westin on The West Wing, Diane Gould on Halt and Catch Fire, Eileen Caffee on Brotherhood, Sarah Gunning on Midnight Mass, Charlotte Millwright on The Bridge and Sheriff Althea Jarry on the seventh and final season of Sons of Anarchy.

Allan Nielsen, Danish footballer and manager

Allan Nielsen is a Danish former professional footballer who played as a midfielder. His most notable period of football was four years at English Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur with whom he won the 1999 League Cup, scoring the winning goal.

Adina Porter, American actress

Adina Elizabeth Porter is an American actress. She is best known for her roles as Lettie Mae Thornton on the HBO fantasy horror series True Blood (2008–2014), Kendra James on the HBO drama series The Newsroom (2012–2014), Indra on the CW science fiction drama series The 100 (2014–2020) and Sheriff Susan Peterkin on the Netflix teen drama series Outer Banks. She received further recognition for her roles as Sally Freeman, Lee Harris, Beverly Hope, Dinah Stevens, and Chief Burleson on the first, sixth, seventh, eighth, and tenth seasons of the FX anthology series American Horror Story (2011–present).

13/03/1970

Tim Story, American director and producer

Timothy Kevin Story is an American film director, producer, and editor. He is best known for Barbershop (2002), Fantastic Four (2005), and the Ride Along franchise. He has been nominated for two NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Directing in a Feature Film/Television Movie in 2006 and 2013.

13/03/1969

Darren Fritz, Australian rugby league player

Darren Fritz is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer who played in the 1980s and 1990s. He played at representative level for Queensland, and at club level for Canberra Raiders, Wakefield Trinity, Illawarra Steelers, North Sydney and Western Suburbs, as a prop, or second-row.

13/03/1967

Andrés Escobar, Colombian footballer (died 1994)

Andrés Escobar Saldarriaga was a Colombian professional footballer who played as a centre-back. He played for Atlético Nacional, BSC Young Boys, and the Colombia national team. Nicknamed The Gentleman, he was known for his clean style of play and calmness on the pitch.

Pieter Vink, Dutch footballer and referee

Pieter Vink is a former Dutch football referee, who also officiated for FIFA and UEFA. He was the first referee to take charge of a match at the "New Wembley Stadium" in 2007. His other occupation was as a police officer, eventually giving this up to become a full-time referee. His main other hobby is golf.

13/03/1966

Chico Science, Brazilian singer-songwriter (died 1997)

Francisco de Assis França, better known as Chico Science, was a Brazilian singer and composer and one of the founders of the manguebeat cultural movement. He died in a car accident in 1997 in Recife, Pernambuco, at the age of 30.

13/03/1964

Will Clark, American baseball player

William Nuschler Clark Jr. is an American professional baseball first baseman who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1986 through 2000. He played for the San Francisco Giants, Texas Rangers, Baltimore Orioles, and St. Louis Cardinals. Clark was known by the nickname of "Will the Thrill." The nickname has often been truncated to simply, "the Thrill."

Craig Dimond, Australian rugby league player

Craig Dimond is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer who played in the 1980s and 1990s. He played his club football career for the Illawarra Steelers, Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks and Canberra Raiders. He is the son of Peter Dimond, nephew of Bobby Dimond, both Australian former rugby league test players, and father of Australian Idol contestant Amali Dimond.

Trevor Gillmeister, Australian rugby league player and coach

Trevor Gillmeister is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer who is employed as a rugby league analyst at Channel 7 Brisbane. During his playing days, Gillmeister played for the Eastern Suburbs Roosters, Brisbane Broncos, Penrith Panthers and the South Queensland Crushers, as well as representing Queensland and Australia.

13/03/1963

Mariano Duncan, Dominican baseball player and manager

Mariano Duncan Nalasco is a Dominican former second baseman and shortstop who played for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies, New York Yankees, and Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball and the Yomiuri Giants of Nippon Professional Baseball during his 12-year career. He was the infield coach and first base coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers under managers Grady Little and Joe Torre. Duncan was an MLB All-Star in 1994 and won two World Series championships as a player. He is currently manager of the Mumbai Cobras of Baseball United.

Vance Johnson, American football player

Vance Edward Johnson is an American former professional football player who was a wide receiver for the Denver Broncos of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Arizona Wildcats. Johnson was selected by the Broncos in the second round of the 1985 NFL draft.

Fito Páez, Argentine musician, songwriter and filmmaker

Rodolfo "Fito" Páez is an Argentine Latin rock musician and filmmaker. A former member of the Trova Rosarina, he is dubbed the "Troubadour of Argentine rock" and is considered an important figure in the genre and in Latin music.

13/03/1962

Alfredo Maia, Portuguese politician

Manuel Alfredo da Rocha Maia is a Portuguese journalist, politician and member of the Assembly of the Republic, the national legislature of Portugal. A communist, he has represented Porto since September 2023. He had previously been a temporary substitute member of the Assembly from September 2022 to March 2023.

13/03/1960

Adam Clayton, English-Irish musician and songwriter

Adam Charles Clayton is an English-Irish musician who is the bass guitarist of the rock band U2. Born in Oxfordshire, England, he lived in County Dublin, Ireland after his family moved to Malahide in 1965, when he was five years old. Clayton attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School, where he met schoolmates with whom he co-founded U2 in 1976. A member of the band since its inception, he has recorded 15 studio albums with U2.

Joe Ranft, American animator, screenwriter, and voice actor (died 2005)

Joseph Henry Ranft was an American animator, screenwriter, and voice actor. He worked for Pixar Animation Studios and Disney at Walt Disney Animation Studios and Disney Television Animation. His younger brother Jerome Ranft is a sculptor who also worked on several Pixar films.

13/03/1959

Dirk Wellham, Australian cricketer

Dirk MacDonald Wellham is a former Australian cricketer who played in six Test matches and 17 One Day Internationals (ODIs) between 1981 and 1987. He is one of four players to score a century in both his first class and Test debuts. He was the first player to captain three Australian states having captained New South Wales, Tasmania and Queensland during his career. As NSW captain, he won the Sheffield Shield in 1984–85 and 1985–86 and the McDonald's Cup in 1984–85.He is the nephew of New South Wales first-class cricketer Walter Wellham.

13/03/1958

Mágico González, Salvadoran footballer

Jorge Alberto González Barillas, popularly known as El Mágico, is a Salvadoran former professional footballer who played mainly as a forward.

Rick Lazio, American lawyer and politician

Enrico Anthony Lazio is an American attorney and former four-term U.S. representative from the State of New York. A Long Island native, Lazio became well-known during his bid for U.S. Senate in New York's 2000 Senate election; he was defeated by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Lazio also ran unsuccessfully for the 2010 New York State Republican Party gubernatorial nomination.

Caryl Phillips, Caribbean-English author and playwright

Caryl Phillips is a Kittitian-British novelist, playwright and essayist. Best known for his novels, Phillips is often described as a Black Atlantic writer, since much of his fictional output is defined by its interest in, and searching exploration of, the experiences of peoples of the African diaspora in England, the Caribbean and the United States. As well as writing, Phillips has worked as an academic at numerous institutions including Amherst College, Barnard College, and Yale University, where he has held the position of Professor of English since 2005.

13/03/1957

John Hoeven, American banker and politician, 31st Governor of North Dakota

John Henry Hoeven III is an American politician and banker serving as the senior U.S. senator from North Dakota, a seat he has held since 2011. A member of the Republican Party, Hoeven served as the 31st governor of North Dakota from 2000 to 2010.

Moses Hogan, American composer and conductor (died 2003)

Moses George Hogan was an American composer and arranger of choral music. He was best known for his settings of spirituals. Hogan was a pianist, conductor, and arranger of international renown. His works are celebrated and performed by high school, college, church, community, and professional choirs today. Over his lifetime, he published 88 arrangements for voice, eight of which were solo pieces.

13/03/1956

Dana Delany, American actress and producer

Dana Delany is an American actress. After appearing in small roles early in her career, Delany received her breakthrough role as Colleen McMurphy on the ABC television drama China Beach (1988–1991), for which she received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1989 and 1992. She received further recognition for her appearances in the films Light Sleeper (1992), Tombstone (1993), Exit to Eden (1994), The Margaret Sanger Story (1995), Fly Away Home (1996), True Women (1997), and Wide Awake (1998). Delany also provided the voice of Lois Lane in Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. Delany has the longest tenure of playing Lois Lane, having portrayed the character intermittently over a span of 17 years.

Jamie Dimon, North-American businessman and banker

James Dimon is an American businessman who has been the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of JPMorgan Chase since 2006.

13/03/1955

Bruno Conti, Italian footballer and manager

Bruno Conti is an Italian football manager and former player. He is currently head of AS Roma's youth sector.

Glenne Headly, American actress (died 2017)

Glenne Aimee Headly was an American actress. She was widely known for her roles in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), Dick Tracy (1990), and Mr. Holland's Opus (1995). Headly received a Theatre World Award and four Joseph Jefferson Awards and was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards.

Olga Rukavishnikova, Russian pentathlete

Olga Aleksandrovna Rukavishnikova is a Soviet athlete who competed in the women's pentathlon event during her career.

13/03/1954

Valerie Amos, Baroness Amos, Guyanese-English politician and diplomat

Valerie Ann Amos, Baroness Amos is a Guyanese-British Labour Party politician and diplomat who served as the eighth UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. Before her appointment to the UN, she served as British High Commissioner to Australia. She was created a life peer in 1997, serving as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council from 2003 to 2007.

Robin Duke, Canadian actress and screenwriter

Robin Duke is a Canadian actress, comedian, and voice actress. Duke may be best known for her work on the television comedy series SCTV and, later, Saturday Night Live. She co-founded Women Fully Clothed, a sketch comedy troupe which toured Canada. She teaches writing as a faculty member at Humber College in Toronto and had a recurring role playing Wendy Kurtz in the sitcom Schitt's Creek.

13/03/1953

Andy Bean, American golfer (died 2023)

Thomas Andrew Bean was an American professional golfer who played on the PGA Tour and the Champions Tour.

Michael Curry, American bishop, 27th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church

Michael Bruce Curry is an American retired bishop who was the 27th presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church. Elected in 2015, he was the first African American elected to the role, having previously served as Bishop of North Carolina from 2000 to 2015. His tenure as presiding bishop ended on November 1, 2024, and he was succeeded by Sean Rowe.

Deborah Raffin, American actress (died 2012)

Deborah Iona Raffin was an American actress, model and audiobook publisher.

13/03/1952

Wolfgang Rihm, German composer and educator

Wolfgang Michael Rihm was a German composer of contemporary classical music and an academic teacher based in Karlsruhe. He was an influential post-war European composer, as "one of the most original and independent musical voices" there, composing over 500 works including several operas.

Tim Sebastian, English journalist and author

Tim Sebastian is an English television journalist and novelist. He is the moderator of Conflict Zone and New Arab Debates on Deutsche Welle. He previously worked for the BBC, where he hosted Doha Debates and was the first presenter of HARDtalk. Sebastian also presented Bloomberg TV's The Outsider, an India-focused debating programme.

13/03/1950

Joe Bugner, Hungarian-British boxer and actor (died 2025)

József Kreul Bugner was a Hungarian-born British–Australian professional boxer, who competed in the heavyweight division, and actor. He held triple nationality, originally being a citizen of Hungary and becoming a naturalised citizen of both the United Kingdom and Australia.

Bernard Julien, Trinidadian cricketer

Bernard Denis Julien was a Trinidad and Tobago cricketer who played as an allrounder. As a right-handed batsman who bowled both left-arm pace and spin, Julien played in 24 Tests and 12 One Day Internationals for the West Indies; he was a noteworthy member of the 1975 World Cup winning squad. He played domestic cricket for Trinidad and Tobago and the English side Kent.

Charles Krauthammer, American physician, journalist, and author (died 2018)

Charles Krauthammer was an American political columnist. A moderate liberal who turned independent conservative as a political pundit, Krauthammer won the Pulitzer Prize for his columns in The Washington Post in 1987. His weekly column was syndicated to more than 400 publications worldwide. While in his first year studying medicine at Harvard Medical School, Krauthammer became permanently paralyzed from the waist down after a diving board accident that severed his spinal cord at cervical spinal nerve 5. After spending 14 months recovering in a hospital, he returned to medical school, graduating to become a psychiatrist involved in the creation of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III in 1980. He joined the Carter administration in 1978 as a director of psychiatric research, eventually becoming the speechwriter to Vice President Walter Mondale in 1980.

William H. Macy, American actor, director, and screenwriter

William Hall Macy Jr. is an American actor and filmmaker. He is a two-time Emmy Award and four-time Screen Actors Guild Award winner, and has been nominated for an Academy Award, a Drama Critics' Circle Award, and five Golden Globe Awards.

13/03/1949

Ze'ev Bielski, Israeli politician

Ze'ev Bielski is on an Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for Kadima between 2009 and 2013. He previously chaired the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization and worked as a Jewish Agency emissary in South Africa. He was the mayor of Ra'anana.

Sian Elias, New Zealand lawyer and politician, 12th Chief Justice of New Zealand

Dame Sian Seerpoohi Elias is a former New Zealand judge who served as the 12th chief justice of New Zealand, and was therefore the most senior member of the country's judiciary. She was the inaugural presiding judge of the Supreme Court of New Zealand and on several occasions acted as administrator of the Government.

Trevor Sorbie, Scottish hairdresser (died 2024)

Trevor John Sorbie was a Scottish celebrity hairdresser and businessman. He is credited as the creator of the wedge haircut and was a four-time winner of British Hairdresser of the Year.

13/03/1947

Lesley Collier, English ballerina and educator

Lesley Faye Collier is an English ballerina and teacher of dance. In 1972 she became a principal dancer of the Royal Ballet. In 1995 she left the company and began to teach at the Royal Ballet School. She is a rèpetiteur at the Royal Ballet.

Beat Richner, Swiss pediatrician and cellist (died 2018)

Beat Richner was a Swiss pediatrician, cellist and founder of children's hospitals in Cambodia. He created the Kantha Bopha Foundation in Zürich in 1992 and became its head. Along with another expatriate, he oversaw and ran the predominantly Cambodian-staffed hospitals. As both a cellist and a medical doctor, Richner was known by patients, audiences, and donors as "Beatocello".

Lyn St. James, American race car driver

Lyn St. James is an American former race car driver. She competed in the IndyCar series, with eleven CART and five Indy Racing League starts to her name. St. James is one of nine women who have qualified for the Indianapolis 500, and became the first woman to win the Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year award. She also has two class victories at the 24 Hours of Daytona, and won the GTO class, partnering with Calvin Fish and Robby Gordon, at the 1990 12 Hours of Sebring. Additionally she has competed in endurance racing in Europe, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 24 Hours of Nürburgring, at which her AMC Spirit AMX team placed first and second in class in 1979.

13/03/1946

Yonatan Netanyahu, American-Israeli colonel (died 1976)

Yonatan "Yoni" Netanyahu was an Israeli military officer who commanded Sayeret Matkal during the Entebbe raid. The raid was launched in response to the 1976 hijacking of an international civilian passenger flight from Israel to France by Palestinian and German militants, who took control of the aircraft during a stopover in Greece and diverted it to Libya and then to Uganda, where they received support from Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Though Israel's counter-terrorist operation was a success, with 102 of the 106 hostages being rescued, Netanyahu was killed in action – the only Israeli soldier killed during the crisis.

13/03/1945

Anatoly Fomenko, Russian mathematician and academic

Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko is a Soviet and Russian professor of Mathematics at Moscow State University. He is well-known as a topologist and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is a painter and illustrator of original artworks inspired by topological objects and structures.

13/03/1944

Terence Burns, Baron Burns, English economist and academic

Terence Burns, Baron Burns, sometimes known as Terry Burns, is a British economist. He made a life peer in 1998 for his services as former Chief Economic Advisor and Permanent Secretary to HM Treasury. He served as Chairman of Ofcom from 2018 to 2020, and is currently a senior adviser to Santander UK, a non-executive Chairman of Glas Cymru, and a non-executive director of Pearson Group plc. He is also a former President of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, President of the Society of Business Economists, ex Chairman of the Governing Body of the Royal Academy of Music, and ex Chairman of the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra. On 5 November 2009 he was announced chairman Designate of Channel Four Television Corporation, succeeding Luke Johnson, who retired on 27 January 2010 following six years in the post.

13/03/1942

Dave Cutler, American computer scientist and engineer

David Neil Cutler Sr. is an American software engineer. He developed several computer operating systems, namely Microsoft Windows NT, and Digital Equipment Corporation's RSX-11M, VAXELN, VMS, and MICA.

Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian poet and author (died 2008)

Mahmoud Darwish was a Palestinian author and poet. He wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, which formally established the State of Palestine in November 1988, and is widely regarded as the country's national poet. His poetry and other literature, for which he won numerous awards internationally, was published in Arabic, while he also spoke English, French, and Hebrew.

Scatman John, American singer-songwriter (died 1999)

John Paul Larkin, known professionally under the alias Scatman John, was an American musician. A prolific jazz pianist and vocalist for several decades, he rose to prominence in 1994 through his fusion of scat singing and dance music. He recorded five albums, which were released between 1986 and 2001.

George Negus, Australian journalist and television host (died 2024)

George Edward Negus AM was an Australian journalist, author, television and radio presenter specialising in international affairs. He was a pioneer of Australian broadcast journalism, first appearing on the ABC's This Day Tonight and later on 60 Minutes. Negus was known for making complex international and political issues accessible to a broad audience through his down-to-earth, colloquial presentation style. His very direct interviewing technique occasionally caused confrontation, famously with Margaret Thatcher, but also led to some interviewees giving more information than they had given in other interviews. Recognition of his unique skills led to him hosting a new ABC show, Foreign Correspondent, and Dateline on SBS. He often reported from the frontline of dangerous conflicts and described himself as an "anti-war correspondent" who wanted people to understand the reasons behind why wars were senseless. He was awarded a Walkley Award for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism. He presented 6.30 with George Negus on Network Ten. He remained a director of his own media consulting company, Negus Media International, until his death in 2024.

13/03/1941

Donella Meadows, American environmentalist, author, and academic (died 2001)

Donella Hager "Dana" Meadows was an American environmental scientist, educator, and writer. She is best known as lead author of the books The Limits to Growth and Thinking In Systems: A Primer.

Lee Moses, American R&B Soul Singer and Guitarist (died 1998)

Vincent Lee Moses, known as Lee Moses, was an American R&B and soul singer and guitarist. His recordings in the late 1960s as well as his 1971 LP Time and Place, are highly regarded within the deep soul genre.

13/03/1939

Neil Sedaka, American singer-songwriter and pianist (died 2026)

Neil Sedaka was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Beginning his music career in 1957, he sold millions of records worldwide and wrote or co-wrote over 500 songs for himself and other artists, collaborating mostly with lyricists Howard Greenfield and Phil Cody.

13/03/1938

Robert Gammage, American captain and politician (died 2012)

Robert Alton Gammage was an American politician, having served as a Democrat in the Texas House of Representatives, the Texas State Senate, and the United States House of Representatives.

13/03/1935

David Nobbs, English author and screenwriter (died 2015)

David Gordon Nobbs was an English comedy writer, best known for writing the 1970s television series The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, adapted from his own novels.

13/03/1933

Diane Dillon, American illustrator

Leo Dillon and Diane Dillon were American illustrators of children's books and adult paperback book and magazine covers. One obituary of Leo called the work of the husband-and-wife team "a seamless amalgam of both their hands". In more than 50 years, they created more than 100 speculative fiction book and magazine covers together as well as much interior artwork. Essentially all of their work in that field was joint.

Mahdi Elmandjra, Moroccan economist and sociologist (died 2014)

Mahdi Elmandjra was a Moroccan futurologist, economist and sociologist. He is one of the founders of the International Federation for Future Studies (Futuribles). He predicted a number of events, the most important of which was the clash of civilisations in his book "The first civilisation war" in 1992, that is, before Samuel Huntington, who used the same concept in his book "The clash of civilisations" issued in 1996. Mahdi Elmandjra also predicted the occurrence of the "Arab Spring", which he referred to in his writings under the name of "Intifada".

Gero von Wilpert, German author and academic (died 2009)

Gero von Wilpert was a German author, a senior lecturer in German at the University of New South Wales and, from 1980, Professor of German at the University of Sydney.

13/03/1930

Walter Jacob, American Reform rabbi (died 2024)

Walter Jacob was an American Reform rabbi. He was rabbi at the Rodef Shalom Congregation in Pittsburgh from 1955 to 1997. He served as chairman of organizations such as the Central Conference of American Rabbis and World Union for Progressive Judaism. Jacob wrote a book, Christianity Through Jewish Eyes in 1974, leading to interfaith dialogue. He founded the Solomon B. Freehof Institute for Progressive Halakhah in 1991, an international forum for Jewish law. In Germany, he co-founded the Abraham Geiger College, the first rabbinic seminary in Central Europe since the Holocaust, in 1999.

13/03/1929

Zbigniew Messner, Polish economist and politician, 9th Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland (died 2014)

Zbigniew Stefan Messner was a Polish communist politician and economist. His ancestors were of German Polish descent who had assimilated into Polish society. In 1972, he became Professor of Karol Adamiecki University of Economics in Katowice. In the 1980s, Messner held numerous high ranking posts within communist party apparatus. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) from 1981 to 1990, when PZPR was dissolved, member of the PZPR Politburo from 1981 to 1988, Deputy Prime Minister from 1983 to 1985, member of Sejm from 1985 to 1989, Prime Minister of Polish People's Republic from 1985 to 1988 and member of the State Council of the Polish People's Republic from 1988 to 1989. Additionally in the 1960s Messner was the chairman of Piast Gliwice football club.

13/03/1926

Carlos Roberto Reina, Honduran lawyer and politician, President of Honduras (died 2003)

Carlos Roberto Reina Idiáquez was a Honduran politician, lawyer and diplomat who served as the President of Honduras from 1994 to 1998. He was a member of the Honduran Liberal Party.

13/03/1925

Roy Haynes, American drummer and composer (died 2024)

Roy Owen Haynes was an American jazz drummer. In the 1950s, he was given the nickname "Snap Crackle" for his distinctive snare drum sound and musical vocabulary. He is among the most recorded drummers in jazz. In a career spanning more than eight decades, he played swing, bebop, jazz fusion and avant-garde jazz. He is considered to be a pioneer of jazz drumming.

13/03/1923

Dimitrios Ioannidis, Greek general (died 2010)

Dimitrios Ioannidis, also known as Dimitris Ioannidis and as The Invisible Dictator, was a Greek military officer and one of the leading figures in the junta that ruled the country from 1967 to 1974. Ioannidis was considered a "purist and a moralist, a type of Greek Gaddafi".

13/03/1921

Al Jaffee, American cartoonist (died 2023)

Allan Jaffee was an American cartoonist. He was known for his work in the satirical magazine Mad, including his trademark feature, the Mad Fold-in. Jaffee was a regular contributor to the magazine for 65 years and is its longest-running contributor. In a 2010 interview, Jaffee said, "Serious people my age are dead."

13/03/1920

Ralph J. Roberts, American businessman, co-founded Comcast (died 2015)

Ralph Joel Roberts was an American businessman who was the founder of Comcast, serving as its CEO for 46 years and as its chairman emeritus until his death in 2015.

13/03/1916

Lindy Boggs, American educator and politician, 5th United States Ambassador to the Holy See (died 2013)

Marie Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs was a politician who served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and later as United States Ambassador to the Holy See. She was the first woman elected to Congress from Louisiana. She was also a permanent chairwoman of the 1976 Democratic National Convention, which met in New York City to nominate the Carter-Mondale ticket. She was the first woman to preside over a major party convention.

Jacque Fresco, American engineer and academic (died 2017)

Jacque Fresco was an American futurist and self-described social engineer. Self-taught, he worked in a variety of positions related to industrial design.

13/03/1914

W. O. Mitchell, Canadian author and playwright (died 1998)

William Ormond Mitchell was a Canadian writer and broadcaster. His "best-loved" novel is Who Has Seen the Wind (1947), which portrays life on the Canadian Prairies from the point of view of a small boy and sold almost a million copies in Canada. As a broadcaster, he is known for his radio series Jake and the Kid, which aired on CBC Radio between 1950 and 1956 and was also about life on the Prairies.

Edward O'Hare, American lieutenant and pilot, Medal of Honor recipient (died 1943)

Lieutenant Commander Edward Henry O'Hare was an American naval aviator of the United States Navy, who on February 20, 1942, became the Navy's first fighter ace of the war when he single-handedly attacked a formation of nine medium bombers approaching his aircraft carrier. Although he had a limited amount of ammunition, O'Hare was credited with shooting down five enemy bombers and became the first naval aviator recipient of the Medal of Honor in World War II.

13/03/1913

William J. Casey, American politician, 13th Director of Central Intelligence (died 1987)

William Joseph Casey was an American lawyer who was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1981 to 1987. In this capacity he oversaw the entire United States Intelligence Community and personally directed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) throughout much of the Reagan administration.

Sergey Mikhalkov, Russian author and playwright (died 2009)

Sergey Vladimirovich Mikhalkov was a Russian author of children's books and satirical fables. He wrote the lyrics for the Soviet and Russian national anthems.

13/03/1911

José Ardévol, Cuban composer and conductor (died 1981)

José Ardévol was a Cuban composer and conductor of Spanish derivation.

L. Ron Hubbard, American author, founder of Scientology (died 1986)

Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was an American author and the founder of Scientology. A prolific writer of pulp science fiction and fantasy novels in his early career, in 1950 he authored the pseudoscientific book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and established organizations to promote and practice Dianetics techniques. Hubbard created Scientology in 1952 after losing the intellectual rights to his literature on Dianetics in bankruptcy. He would lead the Church of Scientology – variously described as a cult, a new religious movement, or a business – until his death in 1986.

13/03/1910

Sammy Kaye, American saxophonist, songwriter, and bandleader (died 1987)

Sammy Kaye was an American bandleader and songwriter, whose tag line, "Swing and Sway with Sammy Kaye", became one of the most famous of the Big Band Era. The expression springs from his first hit single in 1937, "Swing and Sway". He was the first to record and release the standard "Blueberry Hill" in 1940. During World War II, he co-wrote and recorded the anthemic "Remember Pearl Harbor". He was the first to record and release the #1 song "Daddy" in 1941. His final #1 hit was "Harbor Lights" in 1950.

Kemal Tahir, Turkish journalist and author (died 1973)

Kemal Tahir was a prominent Turkish novelist and intellectual. Tahir spent 13 years of his life imprisoned for political reasons and wrote some of his best known novels during this time.

13/03/1908

Walter Annenberg, American publisher, philanthropist, and diplomat, United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom (died 2002)

Walter Hubert Annenberg was an American businessman, investor, philanthropist, and diplomat. Annenberg owned and operated Triangle Publications, which included ownership of The Philadelphia Inquirer, TV Guide, the Daily Racing Form and Seventeen magazine. He was appointed by President Richard Nixon as United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom, where he served from 1969 to 1974.

Myrtle Bachelder, American chemist and Women's Army Corps officer (died 1997)

Myrtle Claire Bachelder was an American chemist and Women's Army Corps officer, who is noted for her secret work on the Manhattan Project atomic bomb program, and for the development of techniques in the chemistry of metals.

13/03/1907

Dorothy Tangney, Australian politician (died 1985)

Dame Dorothy Margaret Tangney DBE was an Australian politician. She was a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and served as a Senator for Western Australia from 1943 to 1968. She was the first woman elected to the Senate and one of the first two women elected to federal parliament, along with Enid Lyons.

13/03/1904

Clifford Roach, Trinidadian cricketer and footballer (died 1988)

Clifford Archibald Roach was a Trinidadian cricketer who played in West Indies' first Test match in 1928. Two years later, he scored the West Indies' first century in Test matches, followed two matches later by the team's first double century. Roach played for Trinidad, but before having any great success at first-class level, he was chosen to tour England with a West Indies team in 1928 and scored over 1,000 runs. When England played in the West Indies in 1930, he recorded his ground-breaking centuries but had intermittent success at Test level afterwards. He toured Australia in 1930–31 and returned to England in 1933, when he once more passed 1,000 runs, but was dropped from the team in 1935. Within three years, he lost his place in the Trinidad team. Roach was generally inconsistent, but batted in an attacking and attractive style. Outside of cricket, he worked as a solicitor. Later in his life, he suffered from diabetes which necessitated the amputation of both his legs.

13/03/1902

Hans Bellmer, German-French painter and sculptor (died 1975)

Hans Bellmer was a German artist, best known for his drawings, etchings that illustrates the 1940 edition of Histoire de l’œil, and the life-sized female dolls he produced in the mid-1930s. Historians of art and photography also consider him a Surrealist photographer.

13/03/1900

Andrée Bosquet, Belgian painter (died 1980)

Andrée Bosquet was a Belgian painter.

Giorgos Seferis, Greek poet and diplomat, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1971)

Giorgos or George Seferis, the pen name of Georgios Seferiadis, was a Greek poet and diplomat. He was one of the most important Greek poets of the 20th century, and a Nobel laureate.

13/03/1899

John Hasbrouck Van Vleck, American physicist and mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1980)

John Hasbrouck Van Vleck was an American physicist and mathematician who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977 for his contributions to the understanding of the behavior of electronic magnetism in solids. He shared the Prize with Philip W. Anderson and Nevill Mott.

Pancho Vladigerov, Bulgarian pianist and composer (died 1978)

Pancho Haralanov Vladigerov was a Bulgarian composer, pedagogue, and pianist.

13/03/1898

Henry Hathaway, American director and producer (died 1985)

Henry Hathaway was an American film director and producer, whose career spanned from the 1930s through the 1970s. He was best known as a director of Western, adventure, and noir films, especially starring John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott, and Gregory Peck. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), starring Cooper.

13/03/1897

Yeghishe Charents, Armenian poet and activist (died 1937)

Yeghishe Charents was an Armenian poet, writer, and public activist. Charents's literary subject matter ranged from his experiences in the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and frequently Armenia and Armenians. He is recognized as "the main poet of the 20th century" in Armenia.

13/03/1892

Janet Flanner, American journalist and author (died 1978)

Janet Flanner was an American writer and pioneering narrative journalist who served as the Paris correspondent of The New Yorker magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975. She wrote under the pen name "Genêt". She also published a single novel, The Cubical City, set in New York City.

13/03/1890

Fritz Busch, German conductor and director (died 1951)

Fritz Busch was a German conductor.

13/03/1888

Paul Morand, French author and diplomat (died 1976)

Paul Morand was a French author whose short stories and novellas were lauded for their style, wit and descriptive power. His most productive literary period was the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s. He was much admired by the upper echelons of society and the artistic avant-garde who made him a cult favorite. He has been categorized as an early Modernist and Imagist.

13/03/1886

Home Run Baker, American baseball player and manager (died 1963)

John Franklin "Home Run" Baker, also known as Frank Baker, was an American professional baseball player. A third baseman, Baker played in Major League Baseball from 1908 to 1922 for the Philadelphia Athletics and New York Yankees. Although he never hit more than 12 home runs in a season and hit only 96 in his major league career, Baker has been called the "original home run king of the majors".

Albert William Stevens, American captain and photographer (died 1949)

Albert William Stevens was an officer of the United States Army Air Corps, balloonist, and aerial photographer.

13/03/1884

Hugh Walpole, New Zealand-English author and educator (died 1941)

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE was an English novelist. He was the son of an Anglican clergyman, intended for a career in the church but drawn instead to writing. Among those who encouraged him were the authors Henry James and Arnold Bennett. His skill at scene-setting and vivid plots, as well as his high profile as a lecturer, brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s but has been largely neglected since his death.

13/03/1883

Enrico Toselli, Italian pianist and composer (died 1926)

Enrico Toselli, Count of Montignoso, was an Italian pianist and composer. Born in Florence, he studied piano with Giovanni Sgambati and composition with Giuseppe Martucci and Reginaldo Grazzini. He embarked on a career as a concert pianist, playing in Italy, European capital cities, Alexandria and North America.

13/03/1880

Josef Gočár, Czech architect (died 1945)

Josef Gočár was a Czech architect. He was one of the founders of modern architecture in the Czech Republic.

13/03/1874

Ellery Harding Clark, American jumper, coach, and lawyer (died 1949)

Ellery Harding Clark was an American track and field athlete and a writer. He was the first modern Olympic champion in high jump and long jump.

13/03/1870

William Glackens, American painter and illustrator (died 1938)

William James Glackens was an American realist painter and one of the founders of the Ashcan School, which rejected the formal boundaries of artistic beauty laid down by the conservative National Academy of Design. He is also known for his work in helping Albert C. Barnes to acquire the European paintings that form the nucleus of the famed Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. His dark-hued, vibrantly painted street scenes and depictions of daily life in pre-WW I New York and Paris first established his reputation as a major artist. His later work was brighter in tone and showed the strong influence of Renoir. During much of his career as a painter, Glackens also worked as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines in Philadelphia and New York City.

13/03/1864

Alexej von Jawlensky, Russian-German painter (died 1941)

Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky, surname also spelt as Yavlensky, was a Russian expressionist painter active in Germany. He was a key member of the New Munich Artist's Association, Der Blaue Reiter group, and later Die Blaue Vier.

13/03/1862

Paul Prosper Henrys, French general (died 1943)

Paul Prosper Henrys was a French general.

13/03/1860

Hugo Wolf, Slovene-Austrian composer (died 1903)

Hugo Philipp Jacob Wolf was an Austrian composer, particularly noted for his art songs, or Lieder. He brought to this form a concentrated expressive intensity which was unique in late Romantic music, somewhat related to that of the Second Viennese School in concision but diverging greatly in technique.

13/03/1857

B. H. Roberts, English-American historian and politician (died 1933)

Brigham Henry Roberts was a historian, politician, and leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He edited the seven-volume History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and independently wrote the six-volume Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Roberts also wrote Studies of the Book of Mormon—published posthumously—which discussed the validity of the Book of Mormon as an ancient record. Roberts was denied a seat as a member of United States Congress because of his practice of polygamy.

13/03/1855

Percival Lowell, American astronomer and mathematician (died 1916)

Percival Lowell was an American businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars, and furthered theories of a ninth planet within the Solar System. He founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and formed the beginning of the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death.

13/03/1825

Hans Gude, Norwegian-German painter and academic (died 1903)

Hans Fredrik Gude was a Norwegian romanticist painter and is considered along with Johan Christian Dahl to be one of Norway's foremost landscape painters. He has been called a mainstay of Norwegian National Romanticism. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting and is best known for landscapes of Norway’s mountains, fjords, and coast.

13/03/1815

James Curtis Hepburn, American physician, linguist, and missionary (died 1911)

James Curtis Hepburn was an American physician, educator, translator and lay Christian missionary. He is known for the Hepburn romanization system for transliteration of the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet, which he popularized in his Japanese–English dictionary.

13/03/1800

Mustafa Reşid Pasha, Ottoman politician, 212th Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire (died 1858)

Mustafa Reşid Pasha was an Ottoman Turkish statesman and diplomat, known best as the chief architect behind the imperial Ottoman government reforms known as Tanzimat.

13/03/1798

Abigail Fillmore, American wife of Millard Fillmore, 14th First Lady of the United States (died 1853)

Abigail Fillmore was the first lady of the United States from 1850 to 1853 as the first wife of President Millard Fillmore. She began work as a schoolteacher at the age of 16, where she took on Millard Fillmore, who was two years her junior, as a student. Fillmore continued her teaching work after their marriage in 1826 until the birth of their son Millard Powers Fillmore in 1828. She lived in Buffalo, New York, while her husband advanced his political career in Albany, New York, and Washington, D.C. She would occasionally join him in these cities, becoming involved in local social life. She became the second lady of the United States in 1849 after her husband was elected vice president on the Whig Party presidential ticket, and she became the first lady of the United States in 1850 after her husband succeeded to the presidency.

13/03/1781

Karl Friedrich Schinkel, German painter and architect, designed the Konzerthaus Berlin (died 1841)

Karl Friedrich Schinkel was a Prussian architect, city planner and painter who also designed furniture and stage sets. Schinkel was one of the greatest German architects, a nineteenth century design genius, and a leader in the International Neoclassical and Gothic Revival movements. His most famous buildings are found in and around Berlin, where he influenced the city's design and landscape profoundly. Schinkel's Bauakademie is considered one of the forerunners of modern architecture. His Altes Museum is one of the most important classical buildings in Europe and a model for future national art museums throughout the world.

13/03/1770

Daniel Lambert, English animal breeder (died 1809)

Daniel Lambert was an English gaol keeper and animal breeder from Leicester, famous for his unusually large size. After serving four years as an apprentice at an engraving and die casting works in Birmingham, he returned to Leicester around 1788 and succeeded his father as keeper of Leicester's gaol. He was a keen sportsman and extremely strong; on one occasion he fought a bear in the streets of Leicester. He was an expert in sporting animals, widely respected for his expertise with dogs, horses and fighting cocks.

13/03/1764

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, English politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (died 1845)

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey was a British Whig politician who served as prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1830 to 1834. His government enacted the Reform Acts of 1832, which expanded the electorate in the United Kingdom, and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which abolished slavery in the British Empire.

13/03/1763

Guillaume Brune, French general and diplomat (died 1815)

Guillaume Marie Anne Brune, 1st Count Brune was a French military commander and Marshal of the Empire who served during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.

13/03/1741

Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (died 1790)

Joseph II was Holy Roman Emperor from 18 August 1765 and sole ruler of the Habsburg monarchy from 29 November 1780 until his death. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Emperor Francis I, and the brother of Marie Antoinette, Leopold II, Maria Carolina of Austria, and Maria Amalia, Duchess of Parma. He was thus the first ruler in the Austrian dominions of the union of the Houses of Habsburg and Lorraine, styled Habsburg-Lorraine.

13/03/1720

Charles Bonnet, Swiss historian and author (died 1793)

Charles Bonnet was a Genevan naturalist and philosophical writer. He is responsible for coining the term phyllotaxis to describe the arrangement of leaves on a plant. He was among the first to notice parthenogenetic reproduction in aphids and established that insects respired through their spiracles. He was among the first to use the term "evolution" in a biological context. Deaf from an early age, he also suffered from failing eyesight and had to make use of assistants in later life to help in his research.

13/03/1719

John Griffin, 4th Baron Howard de Walden, English field marshal and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Essex (died 1797)

Field Marshal John Griffin Griffin, 4th Baron Howard de Walden, KB, was a British Army officer, politician and peer. He served as a junior officer with the Pragmatic Army in the Dutch Republic and Germany during the War of the Austrian Succession. After changing his surname to Griffin in 1749, he commanded a brigade at the Battle of Corbach in July 1760 during the Seven Years' War. He also commanded a brigade at the Battle of Warburg and was wounded at the Battle of Kloster Kampen.

13/03/1700

Michel Blavet, French flute player and composer (died 1768)

Michel Blavet was a French composer and flute virtuoso. Although Blavet taught himself to play almost every instrument, he specialized in the bassoon and the flute which he held to the left, the opposite of how most flutists hold theirs today.

13/03/1683

Johann Wilhelm Weinmann, German botanist (died 1741)

Johann Wilhelm Weinmann, apothecary and botanist, is noted for his creation of the florilegium Phytanthoza iconographia between 1737 and 1745, an ambitious project which resulted in eight folio volumes with more than 1,000 hand-coloured engravings of several thousand plants. The work is thought to have inspired similar works, such as the Japanese medicinal work "Honzo Zufu" (1828) by Iwasaki Tsunemasa, and "Somoku-dzusetsu" (1856) by Yokusai Iinuma.

13/03/1615

Innocent XII, pope of the Catholic Church (died 1700)

Pope Innocent XII, born Antonio Pignatelli, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 12 July 1691 until his death in September 1700.

13/03/1599

John Berchmans, Belgian Jesuit scholastic and saint (died 1621)

John Berchmans, SJ was a Belgian Jesuit scholastic and is revered as a saint in the Catholic Church.

13/03/1593

Georges de La Tour, French painter (probable; (died 1652)

Georges de La Tour was a French Baroque painter, who spent most of his working life in the Duchy of Lorraine, which was temporarily absorbed into France between 1641 and 1648. He painted mostly religious chiaroscuro scenes lit by candlelight.

13/03/1560

William Louis, Count of Nassau-Dillenburg, Dutch count (died 1620)

William Louis of Nassau-Dillenburg was Count of Nassau-Dillenburg from 1606 to 1620, and stadtholder of Friesland, Groningen, and Drenthe.

13/03/1479

Lazarus Spengler, German hymnwriter (died 1534)

Lazarus Spengler was a prominent supporter of Martin Luther and leader of the Protestant Reformation in Nuremberg, as well as a famous hymnwriter.

13/03/1372

Louis I, Duke of Orléans (died 1407)

Louis I was Duke of Orléans from 1392 to his death in 1407. He was also Duke of Touraine (1386–1392), Count of Valois (1386?–1406), Blois (1397–1407), Angoulême (1404–1407), Périgord (1400–1407) and Soissons (1404–07).

Lives Remembered on 13th March

On 13th March, 76 remarkable people passed away — from 1202 to 2025. Remember the lives and legacies of those we lost on this day.

13/03/2025

John Feinstein, American sportswriter and commentator (born 1956)

John Feinstein was an American sportswriter, author, and sports commentator. A long-time sports reporter at the Washington Post, he also wrote numerous books and was particularly known for A Season on the Brink, published in 1986, which chronicled a season with Bob Knight's Indiana Hoosiers men's basketball team.

Raúl Grijalva, United States representative from Arizona (born 1948)

Raúl Manuel Grijalva was an American politician and activist who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Arizona from 2003 until his death in 2025. As member of the Democratic Party, Grijalva represented Arizona's 7th congressional district from 2003 to 2013, Arizona's 3rd congressional district from 2013 to 2023, and the 7th district again from 2023 to 2025. The two districts included the western third of Tucson, part of Yuma and Nogales, and some peripheral parts of metropolitan Phoenix.

Sofia Gubaidulina, Russian-German pianist and composer (born 1931)

Sofia Asgatovna Gubaidulina was a Soviet and Russian composer of modernist sacred music. She was highly prolific, producing numerous chamber, orchestral and choral works. Her output has been described as exploring the tensions between Western and Eastern music, and has been characterised by "innovative use of microtonality and chromaticism, rhythm over form and use of contrasting tonalities.

13/03/2024

Philippe de Gaulle, French admiral (born 1921)

Philippe Henri Xavier Antoine de Gaulle was a French admiral and senator. He was the eldest and last surviving child of General Charles de Gaulle, the first president of the French Fifth Republic, and of his wife, Yvonne.

13/03/2022

William Hurt, American actor (born 1950)

William McChord Hurt was an American actor. Known for his performances on stage and screen, he received various accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor, in addition to nominations for five Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award.

13/03/2021

Marvelous Marvin Hagler, American professional boxer (born 1954)

Marvelous Marvin Hagler was an American professional boxer who competed from 1973 to 1987. He reigned as the undisputed champion of the middleweight division from 1980 to 1987, making twelve successful title defenses, all but one by knockout. Hagler also holds the highest knockout percentage of all undisputed middleweight champions at 78 percent. His undisputed middleweight championship reign of six years and seven months is the second-longest active reign of the 20th century. He holds the record for the sixth longest reign as champion in middleweight history. Nicknamed "The Marv" and annoyed that network announcers often did not refer to him as "Marvelous", Hagler legally changed his name to "Marvelous Marvin Hagler" in 1982.

Murray Walker, English motorsport commentator and journalist (born 1923)

Graeme Murray Walker was an English motorsport commentator and journalist. He provided television commentary of live Formula One coverage for the BBC between 1976 and 1996, and for ITV between 1997 and 2001.

13/03/2018

Emily Nasrallah, Lebanese writer and women's rights activist. (born 1931)

Emily Daoud Nasrallah was a Lebanese writer and women's rights activist.

13/03/2017

Amy Krouse Rosenthal, American author (born 1965)

Amy Krouse Rosenthal was an American author of both adult and children's books, a short film maker, and radio show host. She is best known for her memoir Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, her children's picture books, and the film project The Beckoning of Lovely. She was a prolific writer, publishing more than 30 children's books between 2005 and her death in 2017. She is the only author to have three children's books make the Best Children's Books for Family Literacy list in the same year. She was a contributor to Chicago's NPR affiliate WBEZ, and to the TED conference.

13/03/2016

Hilary Putnam, American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist (born 1926)

Hilary Whitehall Putnam was an American philosopher, mathematician, computer scientist, and figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He contributed to the studies of philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science. Outside philosophy, Putnam contributed to mathematics and computer science. Together with Martin Davis he developed the Davis–Putnam algorithm for the Boolean satisfiability problem and he helped demonstrate the unsolvability of Hilbert's tenth problem.

13/03/2015

Al Rosen, American baseball player and manager (born 1924)

Albert Leonard Rosen, nicknamed "Flip" and "the Hebrew Hammer", was an American professional baseball player and executive. He played his entire career in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a third baseman for the Cleveland Indians from 1947 to 1956.

13/03/2014

Reubin Askew, American sergeant, lawyer, and politician, 37th Governor of Florida (born 1928)

Reubin O'Donovan Askew was an American politician, who served as the 37th governor of Florida from 1971 to 1979. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 7th U.S. trade representative from 1979 to 1980 under President Jimmy Carter. He led on tax reform, civil rights, and financial transparency for public officials, maintaining an outstanding reputation for personal integrity.

Edward Haughey, Baron Ballyedmond, Irish businessman and politician (born 1944)

Edward Enda Haughey, Baron Ballyedmond, OBE, FRCVS, was an Irish-British entrepreneur and politician.

Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, Sierra Leonean economist, lawyer, and politician, 3rd President of Sierra Leone (born 1932)

Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was a Sierra Leonean politician who served as the third President of Sierra Leone from 1996 to 1997 and from 1998 to 2007. An economist and attorney by profession, Kabbah spent many years working for the United Nations Development Programme. He retired from the United Nations and returned to Sierra Leone in 1992.

Icchokas Meras, Lithuanian-Israeli author and screenwriter (born 1934)

Icchokas Meras was a Lithuanian writer.

13/03/2013

Clive Burr, English drummer and songwriter (born 1957)

Clive Ronald Burr was an English musician. He was the drummer of the heavy metal band Iron Maiden from 1979 to 1982. Together with fellow Iron Maiden member Dennis Stratton, he joined Praying Mantis for the recording of their 1996 live album Captured Alive in Tokyo City.

13/03/2011

Rick Martin, Canadian-American ice hockey player (born 1951)

Richard Lionel Martin was a Canadian professional ice hockey winger who played in the NHL with the Buffalo Sabres and Los Angeles Kings for 11 seasons between 1971 and 1982. He featured in the 1975 Stanley Cup Finals with the Sabres. He was most famous for playing on the Sabres' French Connection line with Gilbert Perreault and Rene Robert.

13/03/2010

Jean Ferrat, French singer-songwriter (born 1930)

Jean Ferrat was a French singer-songwriter and poet. He specialized in singing poetry, particularly that of Louis Aragon.

13/03/2009

Betsy Blair, American actress (born 1923)

Betsy Blair was an American actress of film and stage, long based in London.

Alan W. Livingston, American businessman (born 1917)

Alan Wendell Livingston was an American businessman best known for his tenures at Capitol Records, first as a writer/producer who created Bozo the Clown for a series of record-album and illustrative read-along children's book sets starting in the late 40s, and later as suggesting the circular shape of the Capitol Records building in Hollywood. As vice-president in charge of programming at NBC, in 1959 he oversaw the development and launch of the network's most successful television series, Bonanza. On his return to Capitol Records in 1960, he was involved in the label’s move to rock music, which included releasing music recordings by the Beatles after Capitol had rejected the band’s first singles.

13/03/2007

Arnold Skaaland, American wrestler and manager (born 1925)

Arnold Skaaland was an American professional wrestler and professional wrestling manager.

13/03/2006

Robert C. Baker, American businessman, invented the chicken nugget (born 1921)

Robert Carl Baker was an American food science professor. He invented the chicken nugget as well as many other poultry-related inventions. For his contributions to poultry sciences, he was inducted into the American Poultry Hall of Fame.

Jimmy Johnstone, Scottish footballer (born 1944)

James Connolly Johnstone was a Scottish footballer who played as an outside right. Known as "Jinky" for his elusive dribbling style, Johnstone played for Celtic for 13 years and was one of the Lisbon Lions, the team that won the 1967 European Cup Final. Johnstone also won nine consecutive Scottish championships. He scored 129 goals for Celtic in 515 appearances and was voted the club's greatest-ever player by fans in 2002.

Maureen Stapleton, American actress (born 1925)

Lois Maureen Stapleton was an American actress. She received numerous accolades, becoming one of the few actors to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, winning an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and two Tony Awards. She also received a British Academy Film Award and a Golden Globe Award, as well as a nomination for a Grammy Award.

Peter Tomarken, American television personality, game show host (born 1942)

Peter David Tomarken was an American television personality primarily known as the host of the game show Press Your Luck.

13/03/2004

Franz König, Austrian cardinal (born 1905)

Franz König was an Austrian Cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as archbishop of Vienna from 1956 to 1985, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1958. The last surviving cardinal elevated by Pope John XXIII, he was the longest-serving and second-oldest cardinal worldwide at the time of his death.

13/03/2002

Hans-Georg Gadamer, German philosopher and scholar (born 1900)

Hans-Georg Gadamer was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus on hermeneutics, Truth and Method.

13/03/2001

John A. Alonzo, American actor and cinematographer (born 1934)

John Ayala Alonzo, ASC was an American cinematographer, television director, and actor.

Encarnacion Alzona, Filipino historian and educator (born 1895)

Encarnación Amoranto Alzona was a pioneering Filipino historian, educator and suffragist. The first Filipino woman to obtain a Ph.D., she was conferred in 1985 the rank and title of National Scientist of the Philippines.

13/03/1999

Lee Falk, American cartoonist, director, and producer (born 1911)

Lee Falk, born Leon Harrison Gross, was an American writer, playwright, theater director, and producer, best known as the creator of the comic strips Mandrake the Magician and The Phantom. At the height of their popularity, these strips attracted over 100 million readers every day. Falk also wrote short stories, and he contributed to a series of paperback novels about The Phantom.

Garson Kanin, American director and screenwriter (born 1912)

Garson Kanin was an American writer, director, actor and musician. He wrote and directed a number of plays and films and was nominated for three Academy Awards and three Tony Awards for his work.

13/03/1998

Judge Dread, English singer-songwriter (born 1945)

Alexander Minto Hughes, better known as Judge Dread, was an English reggae and ska musician. He was the first white recording artist to have a reggae hit in Jamaica, and the BBC has banned more of his songs from radio and television than those of any other recording artist, because of his frequent use of sexual innuendo and double entendres. Following his death, Rolling Stone reported, "He sold several million albums throughout his 25-plus year career and was second only to Bob Marley in U.K. reggae sales during the 1970s".

Hans von Ohain, German-American physicist and engineer (born 1911)

Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain was a German physicist, engineer, and the designer of the first aircraft to use a turbojet engine. Together with Frank Whittle and Anselm Franz, he has been described as the co-inventor of the turbojet engine. Additionally, prior to building his engine and filing his own patent in 1935, von Ohain had read and critiqued Whittle's patents. Von Ohain stated in his biography that "My interest in jet propulsion began in the fall of 1933 when I was in my seventh semester at Göttingen University. I didn't know that many people before me had the same thought." Unlike Whittle, von Ohain had the significant advantage of being supported by an aircraft manufacturer, Heinkel, who funded his work.

13/03/1996

Krzysztof Kieślowski, Polish director and screenwriter (born 1941)

Krzysztof Kieślowski was a Polish film director and screenwriter. He is known internationally for Dekalog (1989), The Double Life of Veronique (1991), and the Three Colours trilogy (1993–1994).

13/03/1995

Odette Hallowes, French nurse and spy (born 1912)

Odette Marie Léonie Céline Hallowes,, also known as Odette Churchill and Odette Sansom, code named Lise, was an agent for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during the Second World War. She was the first woman to be awarded the George Cross by the United Kingdom and was awarded the Légion d'honneur by France. The following information relating to her war service uses 'Sansom' as this was her surname during this period.

13/03/1990

Bruno Bettelheim, Austrian-American psychologist and author (born 1903)

Bruno Bettelheim was an Austrian-born American psychologist, scholar, public intellectual and writer who spent most of his academic and clinical career in the United States. An early writer on autism, Bettelheim's work focused on the education of emotionally disturbed children, as well as Freudian psychology more generally. In the U.S., he later gained a position as professor at the University of Chicago and director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School for Disturbed Children, and after 1973 taught at Stanford University.

13/03/1983

Paul Citroen, German-Dutch illustrator and educator (born 1896)

Roelof Paul Citroen was a German-born Dutch artist, art educator and co-founder of the New Art Academy in Amsterdam. Among his best-known works are the photo-montage Metropolis and the 1949 Dutch postage stamps.

13/03/1976

Ole Haugsrud, American sports executive (born 1900)

Oluf Roy Haugsrud was an American sports executive. Haugsrud was born in Superior, Wisconsin.

13/03/1975

Ivo Andrić, Yugoslav novelist, poet, and short story writer, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1892)

Ivo Andrić was a Yugoslav novelist, poet and short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961. His writings dealt mainly with life in his native Bosnia under Ottoman rule.

13/03/1972

Tony Ray-Jones, English photographer (born 1941)

Tony Ray-Jones was an English photographer.

13/03/1971

Rockwell Kent, American painter and illustrator (born 1882)

Rockwell Kent was an American painter, printmaker, illustrator, writer, sailor, adventurer and voyager.

13/03/1965

Vittorio Jano, Italian engineer (born 1891)

Vittorio Jano was an Italian automobile designer of Hungarian descent, active in European racing car engine design from the 1920s through 1960s.

Fan Noli, Albanian-American bishop and politician, 14th Prime Minister of Albania (born 1882)

Theofan Stilian Noli, known as Fan Noli, was an Albanian-American writer, scholar, diplomat, politician, historian, orator, bishop, and founder of the Albanian Orthodox Church and the Albanian Orthodox Archdiocese in America who served as Prime Minister and regent of Albania in 1924 during the June Revolution.

13/03/1962

Anne Acheson, Irish sculptor (born 1882)

Anne Crawford Acheson was a British-Irish sculptor. She and Elinor Hallé invented plaster casts for soldier's broken limbs. Acheson exhibited at the Royal Academy and internationally. She was awarded the CBE in 1919. During the First World War she worked for the Surgical Requisites Association at Mulberry Walk in Chelsea, London. Acheson received the Gleichen Memorial Award in 1938. She divided her time between London and Glenavy, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

13/03/1961

Lise Lindbæk, Norwegian journalist and war correspondent (born 1905)

Lise Lindbæk was a Norwegian freelance journalist and foreign correspondent, and writer of several books. She is commonly regarded as Norway's first female war correspondent.

13/03/1953

Johan Laidoner, Estonian general and statesman (born 1884)

Johan Laidoner was an Estonian general and statesman. He served as Commander‑in‑Chief of the Estonian Armed Forces during the Estonian War of Independence and was among the most influential people in the Estonian politics between the world wars.

13/03/1951

Ants "the Terrible" Kaljurand, Estonian anti-communist, freedom fighter and forest brother (born 1917)

Ants Kaljurand popularly known as Terrifying Ants,, was an Estonian anti-communist, and forest brother during and after World War II.

13/03/1946

Werner von Blomberg, German field marshal (born 1878)

Werner Eduard Fritz von Blomberg was a German field marshal and politician who served as the first Minister of War in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1938. Blomberg had served as Chief of the Truppenamt, equivalent to the German General Staff, during the Weimar Republic from 1927 to 1929.

13/03/1943

Stephen Vincent Benét, American poet, short story writer, and novelist (born 1898)

Stephen Vincent Benét was an American poet, short story writer, and novelist. He wrote a book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown's Body, published in 1928, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and the short stories "The Devil and Daniel Webster", published in 1936, and "By the Waters of Babylon", published in 1937.

13/03/1938

Clarence Darrow, American lawyer and author (born 1857)

Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer and politician who became famous in the 19th century for high-profile representations of trade union causes, and in the 20th century for several criminal matters, including the Leopold and Loeb murder trial, the Scopes "monkey" trial, and the Ossian Sweet defense. He was a leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a prominent advocate for Georgist economic reform, as well as a noted public speaker, debater, and writer.

13/03/1936

Francis Bell, New Zealand lawyer and politician, 20th Prime Minister of New Zealand (born 1851)

Sir Francis Henry Dillon Bell was a New Zealand lawyer and politician who served as the 20th prime minister of New Zealand from 14 to 30 May 1925. He was the first New Zealand-born prime minister, holding office in a caretaker capacity following the death of William Massey.

13/03/1923

Josephine Leary, American real estate entrepreneur (born 1856)

Josephine Napoleon Leary (1856–1923) was an American businesswoman and real estate entrepreneur from Edenton, North Carolina. The J. N. Leary building, a large commercial property in Edenton built in 1894, features her name on the pediment.

13/03/1921

Jenny Twitchell Kempton, American opera singer and educator (born 1835)

Jane Elizabeth Kempton was an American contralto opera solo singer who had an active career spanning over fifty years starting in 1850. She sang in hundreds of performances across the United States and Europe during her long career.

13/03/1912

Eugène-Étienne Taché, Canadian engineer and architect, designed the Parliament Building (born 1836)

Eugène-Étienne Taché, ISO was a French Canadian surveyor, civil engineer, illustrator and architect. He devised Quebec's provincial coat-of-arms and motto Je me souviens.

13/03/1906

Susan B. Anthony, American activist (born 1820)

Susan B. Anthony was an American social reformer and women's rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.

13/03/1901

Benjamin Harrison, American general and politician, 23rd President of the United States (born 1833)

Benjamin Harrison was the 23rd president of the United States, serving from 1889 to 1893. He was a member of the Harrison family of Virginia—a grandson of the ninth president, William Henry Harrison, and a great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison V, a Founding Father. A Union army veteran and a Republican, he defeated incumbent Grover Cleveland to win the presidency in 1888.

13/03/1885

Giorgio Mitrovich, Maltese politician (born 1795)

Giorgio Mitrovich was a Maltese patriot and politician known for his role in the struggle for freedom of the press in Malta. He was one of the founders of the Comitato Generale Maltese, and he co-authored a petition in 1832 which led to a new constitution in 1835. He travelled to London multiple times to increase awareness of Maltese grievances, and his 1835 visit resulted in a Royal Commission recommending the abolition of press censorship, which was implemented in 1839. He was briefly elected to the Council of Government in the 1850s.

13/03/1884

Leland Stanford Jr., American son of Leland Stanford (born 1868)

Leland Stanford Jr. was the only child of American industrialist and politician Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane. Following his death from typhoid at age 15, Stanford became the namesake of Stanford University, which is officially called Leland Stanford Junior University.

13/03/1881

Alexander II of Russia (born 1818)

Alexander II was Emperor of Russia, King of Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland from 2 March 1855 until his assassination on 13 March 1881. He is also known as Alexander the Liberator because of his historic Edict of Emancipation, which officially abolished Russian serfdom in 1861. Crowned on 7 September 1856, he succeeded his father Nicholas I and was succeeded by his son Alexander III.

13/03/1879

Adolf Anderssen, German mathematician and chess player (born 1818)

Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen was a German chess master. He won the great international tournaments of 1851 and 1862, but lost matches to Paul Morphy in 1858, and to Wilhelm Steinitz in 1866. Accordingly, he is generally regarded as having been the world's leading chess player from 1851 to 1858, and leading active player from 1862 to 1866, although the title of World Chess Champion did not yet exist.

13/03/1873

David Swinson Maynard, American physician, lawyer, and businessman (born 1808)

David Swinson "Doc" Maynard was an American doctor and businessman. He was one of Seattle's primary founders. Maynard was Seattle's first doctor, merchant prince, second lawyer, Sub-Indian Agent, Justice of the Peace, and architect of the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855.

13/03/1854

Jean-Baptiste de Villèle, French politician, 6th Prime Minister of France (born 1773)

Jean-Baptiste Guillaume Joseph Marie Anne Séraphin, 1st Count of Villèle, better known simply as Joseph de Villèle, was a French statesman who served as the Prime Minister of France from 1821 to 1828. He was a leader of the Ultra-royalist faction during the Bourbon Restoration.

13/03/1842

Henry Shrapnel, English general (born 1761)

Lieutenant-General Henry Scrope Shrapnel was a British Army officer who served in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He invented the shrapnel shell, which was named after him.

13/03/1833

William Bradley, English lieutenant and cartographer (born 1757)

William Bradley was a British naval officer and cartographer who was one of the officers who participated in the First Fleet to Australia. During this expedition, Bradley undertook extensive surveys and became one of the first of the settlers to establish relations with the aborigines, with whom he struck up a dialogue and whose customs and nature he studied extensively. He later however fell out with his aboriginal contacts and instead undertook a mission to gather food which ended with an eleven-month stay on Norfolk Island after a shipwreck.

13/03/1823

John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent, English admiral and politician (born 1735)

Admiral of the Fleet John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent was a Royal Navy officer and politician. Jervis served throughout the latter half of the 18th century and into the 19th, and was an active commander during the Seven Years' War, American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He is best known for his victory at the 1797 Battle of Cape St. Vincent, from which he earned his titles, and as a patron of Horatio Nelson.

13/03/1808

Christian VII of Denmark (born 1749)

Christian VII was King of Denmark and Norway and Duke of Schleswig and Holstein from 1766 until his death in 1808. He was affected by mental illness and was only nominally king for most of his reign. His royal advisers changed depending on the outcome of power struggles. From 1770 to 1772, his court physician Johann Friedrich Struensee was the de facto ruler of the country and introduced progressive reforms signed into law by the king. Struensee was deposed by a coup in 1772, after which the country was ruled by Christian's stepmother, Queen Dowager Juliane Marie of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, his half-brother Hereditary Prince Frederick, and the Danish politician Ove Høegh-Guldberg. From 1784 until Christian VII's death in 1808, Christian's son, later Frederick VI, acted as unofficial prince regent.

13/03/1800

Nana Fadnavis, Indian minister and politician (born 1742)

Nana Fadnavis, born Balaji Janardan Bhanu, was a Maratha minister and statesman during the Peshwa administration in Pune, India. James Grant Duff states that he was called "the Maratha Machiavelli" by the Europeans.

13/03/1719

Johann Friedrich Böttger, German chemist and potter (born 1682)

Johann Friedrich Böttger was a German alchemist. Böttger was born in Schleiz and died in Dresden. He is normally credited with being the first European to discover the secret of the creation of hard-paste porcelain in 1708, but it has also been claimed that English manufacturers or Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus produced porcelain first. Certainly, the Meissen factory, established 1710, was the first to produce porcelain in Europe in large quantities and since the recipe was kept a trade secret by Böttger for his company, experiments continued elsewhere throughout Europe.

13/03/1711

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, French poet and critic (born 1636)

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, often known simply as Boileau, was a French poet and critic. He did much to reform the prevailing form of French poetry, in the same way that Blaise Pascal did to reform the prose. He was greatly influenced by Horace.

13/03/1619

Richard Burbage, English actor (born 1567)

Richard Burbage was a stage actor widely considered to have been one of the most famous individuals of the Globe Theatre and of his time. In addition to stage acting, he was also a theatre entrepreneur. He was the younger brother of Cuthbert Burbage. They were both actors in drama. Burbage was a business associate and friend to William Shakespeare.

13/03/1601

Henry Cuffe, Politician (born 1563)

Sir Henry Cuffe was an English writer and politician, executed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England, for treason.

13/03/1573

Michel de l'Hôpital, French politician (born 1507)

Michel de l'Hôpital was a French lawyer, diplomat and chancellor during the latter Italian Wars and the early French Wars of Religion. The son of a doctor in the service of Charles III, Duke of Bourbon he spent his early life exiled from France at Bourbon's and then the emperors court. When his father entered the service of the House of Lorraine, he entered the patronage network of Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine. Through his marriage to Marie Morin, he acquired a seat in the Parlement of Paris. In this capacity he drew up the charges for the king, concerning the defenders of Boulogne who surrendered the city in 1544, before taking a role as a diplomat to the Council of Trent in 1547. The following year he assisted Anne d'Este in the details of her inheritance to ensure she could marry Francis, Duke of Guise.

13/03/1447

Shah Rukh, Timurid ruler of Persia and Transoxania (born 1377)

Shah Rukh or Shahrukh Mirza was the ruler of the Timurid Empire between 1405 and 1447.

13/03/1415

Minye Kyawswa, Crown Prince of Ava (born 1391)

Minye Kyawswa was crown prince of Ava from 1406 to 1415, and commander-in-chief of Ava's military from 1410 to 1415. He is best remembered in Burmese history as the courageous general who waged the fiercest battles of the Forty Years' War (1385–1424) against King Razadarit of Hanthawaddy Pegu.

13/03/1271

Henry of Almain, English knight (born 1235)

Henry of Almain, also called Henry of Cornwall, was the eldest son of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, afterwards King of the Romans, by his first wife Isabel Marshal. His surname is derived from a vowel shift in pronunciation of d'Allemagne ; he was so called by the elites of England because of his father's status as the elected German King of Almayne.

13/03/1202

Mieszko III the Old, king of Poland (born c. 1121)

Mieszko III, sometimes called Mieszko the Old, was Duke of Greater Poland from 1138 and High Duke of Poland, with interruptions, from 1173 until his death. He was the fourth and second surviving son of Duke Bolesław III Wrymouth of Poland, by his second wife Salomea, daughter of the German count Henry of Berg-Schelklingen.

Celebrations & Special Days Worldwide on 13th March

Christian feast days: Ansovinus

Saint Ansovinus was a bishop of Camerino, and is the patron saint of agriculture. His feast day is 13 March.

Christian feast days: Christina of Persia

Christina, born Yazdoi, was a Sasanian Persian noblewoman and Christian venerated after her death as a virgin martyr.

Christian feast days: Gerald of Mayo

Gerald of Mayo is a saint of the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church.

Christian feast days: James Theodore Holly (Episcopal Church (USA))

James Theodore Augustus Holly was the first African-American bishop in the Protestant Episcopal church, and spent most of his episcopal career as missionary bishop of Haiti.

Christian feast days: Nicephorus

Nikephoros I was a Byzantine writer and Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from 12 April 806 to 13 March 815.

Christian feast days: Roderick

Saint Roderick was a Christian priest of Mozarab background, venerated as one of the Martyrs of Córdoba.

Christian feast days: March 13 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)

March 12 - Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar - March 14

Kasuga Matsuri (Kasuga Grand Shrine, Nara, Japan)

Kasuga-taisha (春日大社) is a Shinto shrine in Nara, Nara Prefecture, Japan. It is the shrine of the Fujiwara family, established in 768 CE and rebuilt several times over the centuries. The interior is famous for its many bronze lanterns, as well as the many stone lanterns that lead up to the shrine.

National Elephant Day (Thailand)

On 26 May 1998, the Thai government declared 13 March to annually be the Thai National Elephant Day or Chang Thai Day. The observance was suggested by the Asian Elephant Foundation of Thailand and submitted to the Coordinating Subcommittee for the Conservation of Thai Elephants. The date was chosen because the Royal Forest Department designated the white elephant as the national animal of Thailand on 13 March 1963.

Africa Scout Day

Scouts' Day or Guides' Day is a generic term for special days observed by members of the Scouting movement throughout the year. Some of these days have religious significance, while others may be a simple celebration of Scouting. Typically, it is a day when all members of Scouting will re-affirm the Scout Promise.

What Happened on 13th March?

46 significant events took place on Monday, 13th March — stretching from 222 to 2020. Explore the moments that shaped history on this day.

13/03/2020

President Donald Trump declares the COVID-19 pandemic to be a national emergency in the United States.

Donald John Trump is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021.

Breonna Taylor is killed by police officers who were forcibly entering her home in Louisville, Kentucky; her death sparked extensive protests against racism and police brutality.

Breonna Taylor was an African-American woman who was shot and killed while unarmed in her Louisville, Kentucky, home by three police officers who entered under the auspices of a "no-knock" search warrant. After Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) ex-detective Brett Hankison was acquitted of felony wanton endangerment of Taylor's neighbors at the state-level, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the Department of Justice was charging Hankison with the unconstitutional use of excessive force that violated Taylor's civil rights. He was found guilty in November 2024. In July 2025, Hankison was sentenced to 33 months in prison, despite the Department of Justice's request for no prison time, and three years of supervised release. Three other officers, who were not present at the shooting, were also federally charged with conspiracy in falsifying evidence to procure the search warrant, and then covering it up.

Katerina Sakellaropoulou is sworn in as the first female President of Greece amid strict COVID-19 measures.

Katerina N. Sakellaropoulou is a Greek retired judge who served as the president of Greece from 2020 to 2025. She was elected by the Hellenic Parliament to succeed Prokopis Pavlopoulos on 22 January 2020. Prior to her election as president, Sakellaropoulou served as president of the Council of State, the highest administrative court of Greece. She was the country's first female president.

13/03/2016

The Ankara bombing kills at least 37 people.

The March 2016 Ankara bombing killed at least 37 people and injured 125. Of the 125 individuals who suffered injuries, 19 were seriously harmed. Several buildings were also damaged during the event, and a bus and many cars were reportedly completely destroyed.

Three gunmen attack two hotels in the Ivory Coast town of Grand-Bassam, killing at least 19 people.

On 13 March 2016, three Islamist gunmen opened fire at a beach resort in Grand-Bassam, Ivory Coast, killing at least 19 people and injuring 33 others.

13/03/2015

Serbian Army Mi-17 helicopter crashes near Belgrade airport while transporting a 5-day-old baby with respiratory problems to hospital, killing all 7 on board.

On 13 March 2015, Serbian Army Mi-17 helicopter crashed just short of Belgrade airport while employed in transportation of a 5-day-old baby with respiratory problems due to road blockade by the landslide. All 7 individuals aboard, including four crew members, two medical staff and the baby, died. The helicopter flew from Novi Pazar to Belgrade in order to transport sick baby to the hospital. The flight was order by Minister of Health Zlatibor Lončar and then-minister of defense Bratislav Gašić. Due to bad weather, the helicopter made several circles around the airport and two landing attempts, but then crashed with no survivors.

13/03/2013

The 2013 papal conclave elects Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio taking the name Pope Francis as the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church.

A conclave was held on 12 and 13 March 2013 to elect a new pope to succeed Benedict XVI, who had resigned on 28 February 2013. Of the 117 eligible cardinal electors, all but two attended. On the fifth ballot, the conclave elected Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires. After accepting his election, he took the name Francis.

13/03/2012

The Sierre coach crash kills 28 people, including 22 children.

The Sierre bus crash occurred on 13 March 2012 near Sierre, Switzerland, when a coach carrying school teachers and pupils crashed into a wall in the Sierre Tunnel. Of the 52 people on board, 28 were killed in the crash, including both drivers, all four teachers, and 22 of the 46 children. The other 24 pupils, all aged between 10 and 12, were injured, including three who were hospitalised with serious brain and chest injuries.

13/03/2003

An article in Nature identifies the Ciampate del Diavolo as 350,000-year-old hominid footprints.

Nature is a British weekly international scientific journal publishing peer-reviewed research across the natural sciences, including biology, physics, chemistry, the earth sciences, and related interdisciplinary fields. It operates editorial offices in London, the United States, continental Europe, and Asia under the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature. According to the 2022 Journal Citation Reports, Nature had one of the highest impact factors among multidisciplinary science journals (50.5), reflecting its strong citation influence within the scientific literature; some commentators also regard it as among the most influential scientific journals worldwide. In 2007, Nature received the Prince of Asturias Award for Communications and Humanity. As of 2012, it claimed an online readership of about three million unique readers per month.

13/03/1997

The Missionaries of Charity choose Sister Nirmala to succeed Mother Teresa as their leader.

The Missionaries of Charity is a Catholic centralised religious institute of consecrated life of pontifical right for women established in 1950 by Mother Teresa. As of 2023, it consisted of 5,750 members of religious sisters. Members of the order designate their affiliation using the order's initials, "M.C." A member of the congregation must adhere to the vows of chastity, poverty, obedience, and the fourth vow, to give "wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor". Today, the order consists of both contemplative and active branches in several countries.

13/03/1996

The Dunblane massacre leads to the death of sixteen primary school children and one teacher in Dunblane, Scotland.

The Dunblane massacre was a school shooting that took place at Dunblane Primary School in Dunblane, near Stirling, Scotland, on 13 March 1996, when 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton killed 16 pupils and one teacher and injured 15 others before killing himself. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in British history.

13/03/1993

The 1993 Storm of the Century affects the eastern United States, dropping feet of snow in many areas.

The 1993 Storm of the Century was a devastating cyclonic storm, or nor'easter, that formed over the Gulf of Mexico on March 12, 1993. The cold weather, heavy snowfall, high winds and storm surge that the storm brought affected a very large area; at its height, it stretched from Canada to Honduras. The cyclone moved through the Gulf of Mexico and then through the eastern United States before moving on to eastern Canada. It eventually dissipated in the North Atlantic Ocean on March 15.

13/03/1992

The Mw  6.6 Erzincan earthquake strikes eastern Turkey with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe).

An earthquake struck eastern Turkey near the city of Erzincan at 20:18:39 local time on 13 March 1992. The second major earthquake to hit Erzincan in half a century, it measured 6.6–6.7 on the moment magnitude scale (Mw ). It was assigned a maximum Modified Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent) and EMS-98 intensity of IX (Destructive). The horizontal peak ground acceleration reached 0.5 g, which is near the 1 in 475 year maximum for the area. Two days after the mainshock, a large Ms5.8 aftershock struck Pülümür, causing further damage. Faulting occurred on the North Anatolian Fault where multiple other Mw 8+ earthquakes have occurred.

13/03/1989

Space Shuttle Discovery launches on STS-29 carrying the TDRS-4 satellite.

Space Shuttle Discovery is a retired American Space Shuttle orbiter. The spaceplane was one of the orbiters from NASA's Space Shuttle program and the third of five fully operational orbiters to be built. Its first mission, STS-41-D, flew from August 30 to September 5, 1984. Over 27 years of service it launched and landed 39 times, aggregating more spaceflights than any other spacecraft as of December 2024. The Space Shuttle launch vehicle had three main components: the Space Shuttle orbiter, a single-use central fuel tank, and two reusable solid rocket boosters. Nearly 25,000 heat-resistant tiles cover the orbiter to protect it from high temperatures on re-entry.

13/03/1988

The Seikan Tunnel, the longest tunnel in the world with an undersea segment, opens between Aomori and Hakodate, Japan.

The Seikan Tunnel is a 53.85-kilometre (33.5-mile) dual-gauge railway tunnel in Japan, with a 23.3-kilometre (14.5-mile) segment running beneath the seabed of the Tsugaru Strait, which separates Aomori Prefecture on Honshu, Japan's main island, from the northern island of Hokkaido. The tunnel's track level lies approximately 100 metres (330 ft) below the seabed and 240 metres (790 ft) below sea level. Following several decades of planning and construction, the tunnel opened on 13 March 1988.

13/03/1979

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

The New Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education, and Liberation, or New JEWEL Movement (NJM), was a Marxist–Leninist vanguard party in the Caribbean island nation of Grenada that was led by Maurice Bishop.

13/03/1974

Sierra Pacific Airlines Flight 802 crashes into the White Mountains near Bishop, California, killing 36.

Sierra Pacific Airlines Flight 802 was a charter flight from Bishop, California to Burbank, California that crashed into the White Mountains on the evening of March 13, 1974. The aircraft, carrying a movie production crew, crashed for undetermined reasons, killing all 36 occupants on board. To this day, the crash remains one of only three aviation accidents to be unsolved by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and it stands as the fourth-deadliest crash of a Convair CV-440 to date.

13/03/1969

Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module.

Apollo 9 was the third human spaceflight in NASA's Apollo program, which successfully tested systems and procedures critical to landing on the Moon. The three-man crew consisted of Commander James McDivitt, Command Module Pilot David Scott, and Lunar Module Pilot Rusty Schweickart. Flown in low Earth orbit, it was the second crewed Apollo mission that the United States launched via a Saturn V rocket, and was the first flight of the full Apollo spacecraft: the command and service module (CSM) with the Lunar Module (LM).

13/03/1964

Kitty Genovese is murdered in New York City, prompting research into the bystander effect due to the false story that neighbors witnessed the killing and did nothing to help her.

Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old bartender, was raped and stabbed to death on March 13, 1964, outside the apartment building where she lived in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City, United States. Two weeks after the murder, The New York Times published an article claiming that thirty-seven witnesses saw or heard the attack, and that none of them called the police or came to her aid. However, subsequent investigations revealed that the extent of public apathy was exaggerated. While some neighbors heard her cries, many did not realize the severity of the situation. The incident prompted inquiries into what became known as the bystander effect, or "Genovese syndrome," and the lack of any urgent response by many of Genovese's neighbors became a topic reviewed in U.S. psychology textbooks for the next four decades.

13/03/1957

Cuban student revolutionaries storm the presidential palace in Havana in a failed attempt on the life of President Fulgencio Batista.

Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country in the Caribbean. It comprises the eponymous main island as well as 4,195 islands, islets, and cays. Situated at the convergence of the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Atlantic Ocean, Cuba is located east of the Yucatán Peninsula, south of both Florida and the Bahamas, west of Hispaniola, and north of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. Havana is the largest city and capital. Cuba is the third-most populous country in the Caribbean after Haiti and Dominican Republic, with about 10 million inhabitants. It is the largest country in the Caribbean by area. Culturally, Cuba is considered part of Latin America.

13/03/1954

The Battle of Điện Biên Phủ begins with an artillery barrage by Viet Minh forces under Võ Nguyên Giáp; Viet Minh victory led to the end of the First Indochina War and French withdrawal from Vietnam.

The Battle of Điện Biên Phủ was a defeat of the French Union forces by the Viet Minh forces in the First Indochina War. It took place between 13 March and 7 May 1954.

13/03/1943

The Holocaust: German forces liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Kraków.

The Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered around six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, approximately two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were committed primarily through mass shootings across Eastern Europe and poison gas chambers in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chełmno and Majdanek death camps in occupied Poland. Concurrent Nazi persecutions killed millions of other non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term Holocaust is sometimes used to include the murder and persecution of non-Jewish groups, such as the Romani and Soviet POWs.

13/03/1940

The Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union officially ends after the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty.

The Winter War was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II, and ended three and a half months later with the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940. Despite superior military strength, especially in tanks and aircraft, the Soviet Union suffered severe losses and initially made little headway. The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from its organization.

13/03/1930

The news of the discovery of Pluto is announced by Lowell Observatory.

Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner planets. Pluto has roughly one-sixth the mass of the Moon and one-third of its volume. Originally considered a planet, its status was changed when astronomers adopted a new definition of the word with new criteria.

13/03/1920

The Kapp Putsch briefly ousts the Weimar Republic government from Berlin.

The Kapp Putsch, also known as the Kapp–Lüttwitz Putsch, was an abortive coup d'état against the German national government in Berlin on 13 March 1920. Named after its leaders Wolfgang Kapp and Walther von Lüttwitz, its goal was to undo the German Revolution of 1918–1919, overthrow the Weimar Republic, and establish an autocratic government. It was supported by parts of the Reichswehr, as well as nationalist and monarchist factions.

13/03/1900

British forces occupy Bloemfontein, Orange Free State, during the Second Boer War.

Bloemfontein, also known as Bloem, is the capital and the largest city of the Free State province in South Africa. It is often, and has been traditionally, referred to as the country's "judicial capital", alongside the legislative capital Cape Town and administrative capital Pretoria. However, the highest court in South Africa, the Constitutional Court, has been in Johannesburg since 1994.

13/03/1888

The eruption of Ritter Island triggers tsunamis that kill up to 3,000 people on nearby islands.

On the morning of 13 March 1888, a section of Ritter Island, a small volcanic island off the coast of New Guinea, collapsed into the sea in a sector collapse. Prior to its collapse, Ritter Island was a steeply-sloping, 780 m (2,560 ft) volcanic cone which produced eruptions in the 1690s and 1790s. The collapse in 1888 reduced its height to about 140 m (460 ft), while the remaining edifice, estimated by volcanologists to be 2.4 km3 (0.58 cu mi) or 4.2 km3 (1.0 cu mi), was deposited onto the seafloor. If the latter figure is correct, this sector collapse would be more voluminous than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. The present-day Ritter Island is a crescent-shaped remnant of the former cone and it last erupted in 1972.

13/03/1884

The Siege of Khartoum begins. It lasts until January 26, 1885.

The siege of Khartoum took place from 13 March 1884 to 26 January 1885. Sudanese Mahdist forces captured the city of Khartoum, Sudan, from its Egyptian garrison, thereby gaining control over the whole of Turco-Egyptian Sudan.

13/03/1862

The Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves is passed by the United States Congress, effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves is a law passed by the United States Congress during the American Civil War forbidding all officers or persons in the Union military or naval service to return escaped enslaved people to their enslavers with the aid or use of the forces under their respective commands.

13/03/1848

The German revolutions of 1848–1849 begin in Vienna.

The German revolutions of 1848–1849, the opening phase of which was also called the March Revolution, were initially part of the Revolutions of 1848 that broke out in many European countries. They were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation, including the Austrian Empire. The revolutions, which stressed pan-Germanism, liberalism, and parliamentarianism, demonstrated popular discontent with the traditional, largely autocratic political structure of the 39 independent states of the Confederation that inherited the German territory of the former Holy Roman Empire after its dismantlement as a result of the Napoleonic Wars. This process began in the mid-1840s.

13/03/1845

Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto receives its première performance in Leipzig with Ferdinand David as soloist.

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, simply known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic era. Mendelssohn's compositions include symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ music and chamber music. His best-known works include the String Octet, the overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Italian and Scottish Symphonies, the oratorios St. Paul and Elijah, the Hebrides Overture, the mature Violin Concerto, and the melody used in the Christmas carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words are his most famous solo piano compositions.

13/03/1825

Pope Leo XII publishes the apostolic constitution Quo Graviora in which he renewed the prohibition on Catholics joining freemasonry.

Pope Leo XII was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 28 September 1823 to his death in February 1829.

13/03/1815

Participants at the Congress of Vienna declare Napoleon an outlaw following his escape from Elba.

The Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 was a series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order after the downfall of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Participants were representatives of all European powers and other stakeholders. The Congress was chaired by Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich and was held in Vienna from September 1814 to June 1815.

13/03/1811

A French and Italian fleet is defeated by a British squadron off the island of Vis in the Adriatic during the Napoleonic Wars.

The Battle of Lissa, also known as the Battle of Vis, was a naval action fought between a British frigate squadron and a much larger squadron of French and Italian frigates and smaller vessels on Wednesday, 13 March 1811 during the Adriatic campaign of the Napoleonic Wars. The engagement was fought in the Adriatic Sea for possession of the strategically important Croatian island of Vis, from which the British squadron had been disrupting French shipping in the Adriatic. The French needed to control the Adriatic to supply a growing army in the Illyrian Provinces and consequently dispatched an invasion force in March 1811 consisting of six frigates, numerous smaller craft and a battalion of Italian troops.

13/03/1809

Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden is deposed in the Coup of 1809.

Gustav IV Adolf or Gustav IV Adolph was King of Sweden from 1792 until he was deposed in a coup in 1809. He was also the last Swedish monarch to be the ruler of Finland.

13/03/1781

William Herschel discovers Uranus.

Frederick William Herschel was a German–British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline Herschel. Born in the Electorate of Hanover, he followed his father into the military band of Hanover, before emigrating to Britain in 1757 at the age of 19.

13/03/1741

The Battle of Cartagena de Indias (part of the War of Jenkins' Ear) begins.

The Battle of Cartagena de Indias took place during the 1739 to 1748 War of Jenkins' Ear between Spain and Great Britain. The result of long-standing commercial tensions, the war was primarily fought in the Caribbean; the British tried to capture key Spanish ports in the region, including Porto Bello and Chagres in Panama, Havana, and Cartagena de Indias in present-day Colombia.

13/03/1697

Nojpetén, capital of the last independent Maya kingdom, falls to Spanish conquistadors, the final step in the Spanish conquest of Guatemala.

Nojpetén was the capital city of the Itza Maya kingdom of Petén Itzá. It was located on an island in Lake Petén Itzá in the modern department of Petén in northern Guatemala. The island is now occupied by the modern town of Flores, the capital of the Petén department, and has had uninterrupted occupation since pre-Columbian times. Nojpetén had defensive walls built upon the low ground of the island, which may have been hastily constructed by the Itza at a time when they felt threatened either by the encroaching Spanish or by other Maya groups.

13/03/1639

Harvard College is named after clergyman John Harvard.

Harvard College is the undergraduate college within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.

13/03/1591

At the Battle of Tondibi in Mali, Moroccan forces of the Saadi dynasty, led by Judar Pasha, defeat the Songhai Empire, despite being outnumbered by at least five to one.

The Battle of Tondibi was the decisive confrontation in the 16th-century invasion of the Songhai Empire by the army of the Saadi dynasty. The Saadi forces under Judar Pasha defeated the Songhai under Askia Ishaq II, guaranteeing the empire's downfall.

13/03/1567

The Battle of Oosterweel, traditionally regarded as the start of the Eighty Years' War.

The Battle of Oosterweel took place on 13 March 1567 near the village of Oosterweel, near Antwerp, in present-day Belgium, and is traditionally seen as the beginning of the Eighty Years' War. A Spanish mercenary army surprised a band of rebels and killed or captured almost all of them.

13/03/1323

Siege of Warangal: Sultan Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq sends an expeditionary army led by his son, Muhammad bin Tughluq, to the Kakatiya capital Warangal – after ruler Prataparudra has refused to make tribute payments. He besieges the city and finally, after a campaign of 8 months, Prataparudra surrenders on November 9.

In 1323, the Delhi Sultanate ruler Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq sent an army led by his son Ulugh Khan to the Kakatiya capital Warangal, after the Kakatiya ruler Prataparudra refused to make tribute payments. Ulugh Khan's first siege of Warangal failed because of a rebellion resulting from a false rumour about Ghiyath al-Din's death in Delhi. Ulugh Khan had to retreat to Devagiri, but he returned to Warangal within four months, this time with reinforcements from Delhi. Prataparudra was defeated and taken captive, resulting in the end of the Kakatiya dynasty.

13/03/1261

The Byzantine Empire and the Republic of Genoa sign a permanent treaty against the Venetians at Nymphaeum.

The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, it endured until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. The term 'Byzantine Empire' was coined only after its demise; its citizens used the term 'Roman Empire' and called themselves 'Romans'.

13/03/0624

The Battle of Badr, the first major battle between the Muslims and Quraysh.

The Battle of Badr or sometimes called The Raid of Badr, also referred to as The Day of the Criterion in the Qur'an and by Muslims, was fought on 13 March 624 CE, near the present-day city of Badr, Al Madinah Province in Saudi Arabia. Muhammad, commanding an army of his Sahaba, defeated an army of the Quraysh led by Amr ibn Hishām, better known among Muslims as Abu Jahl. The battle marked the beginning of the six-year war between Muhammad and his tribe. The Battle of Badr took place after five or six unsuccessful attempts by the Muslims to intercept and raid Meccan trade caravans between 623 and early 624 CE.

13/03/0483

Election of Pope Felix III following the death of Pope Simplicius earlier that month.

Pope Felix III was the bishop of Rome from 13 March 483 to his death on 1 March 492. His repudiation of the Henotikon is considered the beginning of the Acacian schism. He is commemorated on March 1.

13/03/0222

Roman emperor Elagabalus is murdered alongside his mother, Julia Soaemias. He is replaced by his 14-year old cousin, Severus Alexander.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, better known by his posthumous nicknames Elagabalus and Heliogabalus, was Roman emperor from 218 to 222, while he was still a teenager. His short reign was notorious for religious controversy and alleged sexual debauchery. A close relative to the Severan dynasty, he came from a prominent Syrian Arab family in Emesa (Homs), Syria, where he served as the head priest of the sun god Elagabal from a young age. After the death of his cousin, the emperor Caracalla, Elagabalus was raised to the Principate at 14 years of age in an army revolt instigated by his grandmother Julia Maesa against Caracalla's short-lived successor, Macrinus. He only posthumously became known by the Latinised name of his god.

On this day

What the Weather Had in Store for Lissabon on 13th March 2026

13th March in the Stars – Star Sign Pisces

Personality Profile

Fun Facts About 13th March

Famous Birthdays on 13th March

Coco Gauff, American tennis player

Frank Gore Jr., American football player

Beomgyu, South Korean singer-songwriter

Thomas Dearden, Australian rugby league player

Jay-Roy Grot, Dutch footballer

Jack Harlow, American rapper, singer-songwriter, and actor

Pyper America, American model, actress, and musician

Landry Shamet, American basketball player

Brayden Point, Canadian ice hockey player

Mikaela Shiffrin, American skier

Jang Su-jeong, South Korean tennis player

Gerard Deulofeu, Spanish footballer

Mohammed Siraj, Indian cricketer

Tyrone Mings, English footballer

Lucy Fry, Australian actress

George MacKay, English actor

Ozuna, Puerto Rican singer-songwriter and rapper

L, South Korean actor and singer

Daniel Greig, Australian speed skater

Tristan Thompson, American basketball player

Anicet Abel, Malagasy footballer

Marcell Dareus, American football player

Holger Badstuber, German footballer

Peaches Geldof, English columnist, television personality, and model (died 2014)

Sandy León, Venezuelan baseball player

Marko Marin, German footballer

Robert Wickens, Canadian racing driver

Furdjel Narsingh, Dutch footballer

Marco Andretti, American race car driver

Andreas Beck, German footballer

Neil Wagner, South African-New Zealand cricketer

Alcides, Brazilian footballer

Emile Hirsch, American actor

Geeta Basra, Indian actress

Kaitlin Sandeno, American swimmer

Izi Castro Marques, Brazilian basketball player

Nicole Ohlde, American basketball player

Caron Butler, American basketball player

Brad Watts, Australian rugby league player

Johan Santana, Venezuelan baseball player

Cédric Van Branteghem, Belgian sprinter

Tom Danielson, American cyclist

Troy Hudson, American basketball player and rapper

Danny Masterson, American actor and producer

Mark Clattenburg, English football referee

James Brinkley, Scottish cricketer

Thomas Enqvist, Swedish tennis player and sportscaster

Edgar Davids, Surinamese-Dutch footballer and manager

David Draiman, American singer-songwriter

Bobby Jackson, American basketball player and coach

Common, American rapper and actor

Trent Dilfer, American football player, coach, and analyst

Annabeth Gish, American actress

Allan Nielsen, Danish footballer and manager

Adina Porter, American actress

Tim Story, American director and producer

Darren Fritz, Australian rugby league player

Andrés Escobar, Colombian footballer (died 1994)

Pieter Vink, Dutch footballer and referee

Chico Science, Brazilian singer-songwriter (died 1997)

Will Clark, American baseball player

Craig Dimond, Australian rugby league player

Trevor Gillmeister, Australian rugby league player and coach

Mariano Duncan, Dominican baseball player and manager

Vance Johnson, American football player

Fito Páez, Argentine musician, songwriter and filmmaker

Alfredo Maia, Portuguese politician

Adam Clayton, English-Irish musician and songwriter

Joe Ranft, American animator, screenwriter, and voice actor (died 2005)

Dirk Wellham, Australian cricketer

Mágico González, Salvadoran footballer

Rick Lazio, American lawyer and politician

Caryl Phillips, Caribbean-English author and playwright

John Hoeven, American banker and politician, 31st Governor of North Dakota