Historical Events on Friday, 13th March

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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13/03/1996

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

The Dunblane massacre 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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 murder became present in U.S. psychology textbooks for the next four decades.

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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.

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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 decisive defeat of the French Union by the Viet Minh in the First Indochina War. It took place between 13 March and 7 May 1954.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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13/03/1845

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

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ music and chamber music. His best-known works include 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, the String Octet, 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.

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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.

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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.

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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 soldiers.

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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.

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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 immigrating to Britain in 1757 at the age of 19.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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'.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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