Events on April 13 40
Year 945
Hugh of Provence abdicates the throne in favor of his son Lothair II who is acclaimed sole king of Italy.
Year 1204
Constantinople falls to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade, temporarily ending the Byzantine Empire.
Year 1613
Samuel Argall captures Native American princess Pocahontas in Passapatanzy, Virginia to ransom her for some English prisoners held by her father; she is brought to Henricus as hostage.
Year 1742
George Frideric Handel's oratorio Messiah makes its world-premiere in Dublin, Ireland.
Year 1777
American Revolutionary War: American forces are ambushed and defeated in the Battle of Bound Brook, New Jersey.
Year 1829
The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 gives Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom the right to vote and to sit in Parliament.
Year 1849
Lajos Kossuth presents the Hungarian Declaration of Independence in a closed session of the National Assembly.
Year 1873
The Colfax massacre, in which more than 60 African Americans are murdered, takes place.
Year 1909
The military of the Ottoman Empire reverses the Ottoman countercoup of 1909 to force the overthrow of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
Year 1919
Jallianwala Bagh massacre: British troops gun down at least 379 unarmed demonstrators in Amritsar, India; at least 1200 are wounded.
Year 1919
Eugene V. Debs is imprisoned at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, for speaking out against the draft during World War I.
Year 1943
World War II: The discovery of mass graves of Polish prisoners of war killed by Soviet forces in the Katyń Forest Massacre is announced, causing a diplomatic rift between the Polish government-in-exile in London from the Soviet Union, which denies responsibility.
Year 1943
The Jefferson Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C., on the 200th anniversary of President Thomas Jefferson's birth.
Year 1945
World War II: German troops kill more than 1,000 political and military prisoners in Gardelegen, Germany.
Year 1948
In an ambush, 78 Jewish doctors, nurses and medical students from Hadassah Hospital, and a British soldier, are massacred by Arabs in Sheikh Jarrah.
Year 1960
The United States launches Transit 1-B, the world's first satellite navigation system.
Year 1964
At the Academy Awards, Sidney Poitier becomes the first African-American male to win the Best Actor award for the 1963 film Lilies of the Field.
Year 1970
An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 explodes, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the spacecraft while en route to the Moon.
Year 1972
The Universal Postal Union decides to recognize the People's Republic of China as the only legitimate Chinese representative, effectively expelling the Republic of China administering Taiwan.
Year 1974
Western Union (in cooperation with NASA and Hughes Aircraft) launches the United States' first commercial geosynchronous communications satellite, Westar 1.
Year 1975
An attack by the Phalangist resistance kills 26 militia members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, marking the start of the 15-year Lebanese Civil War.
Year 1976
The United States Treasury Department reintroduces the two-dollar bill as a Federal Reserve Note on Thomas Jefferson's 233rd birthday as part of the United States Bicentennial celebration.
Year 1976
Forty workers die in an explosion at the Lapua ammunition factory, the deadliest accidental disaster in modern history in Finland.
Year 1987
Portugal and the People's Republic of China sign an agreement in which Macau would be returned to China in 1999.
Year 1992
Basements throughout the Chicago Loop are flooded, forcing the Chicago Board of Trade Building and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to close.
Year 2017
The US drops the largest ever non-nuclear weapon on Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan.