Events on February 13 47
Year 951
Guo Wei, a court official, leads a militay coup and declares himself emperor of the new Later Zhou.
Year 962
Emperor Otto I and Pope John XII co-sign the Diploma Ottonianum, recognizing John as ruler of Rome.
Year 1462
The Treaty of Westminster is finalised between Edward IV of England and the Scottish Lord of the Isles.
Year 1503
Challenge of Barletta: Tournament between 13 Italian and 13 French knights near Barletta.
Year 1542
Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, is executed for adultery.
Year 1575
Henry III of France is crowned at Reims and marries Louise de Lorraine-Vaudémont on the same day.
Year 1660
With the death of Swedish King Charles X Gustav, the Swedish government begins to seek peace with Sweden's enemies in the Second Northern War, something that Charles had refused. As his son and successor on the throne, Charles XI, is only four years old, a regency rules Sweden until 1672.
Year 1692
Massacre of Glencoe: Almost 80 Macdonalds at Glen Coe, Scotland are killed early in the morning for not promptly pledging allegiance to the new king, William of Orange.
Year 1739
Battle of Karnal: The army of Iranian ruler Nader Shah defeats the forces of the Mughal emperor of India, Muhammad Shah.
Year 1755
Treaty of Giyanti signed by VOC, Pakubuwono III and Prince Mangkubumi. The treaty divides the Javanese kingdom of Mataram into 2: Sunanate of Surakarta and Sultanate of Yogyakarta.
Year 1849
The delegation headed by Metropolitan bishop Andrei Șaguna hands out to the Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria the General Petition of Romanian leaders in Transylvania, Banat and Bukovina, which demands that the Romanian nation be recognized.
Year 1861
In Gaeta the capitulation of the fortress decreeing the end of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies is signed.
Year 1867
Work begins on the covering of the Senne, burying Brussels's primary river and creating the modern central boulevards.
Year 1913
The 13th Dalai Lama proclaims Tibetan independence following a period of domination by Manchu Qing dynasty and initiated a period of almost four decades of independence.
Year 1914
Copyright: In New York City the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members.
Year 1935
A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh.
Year 1945
World War II: The siege of Budapest concludes with the unconditional surrender of German and Hungarian forces to the Red Army.
Year 1945
World War II: Royal Air Force bombers are dispatched to Dresden, Germany to attack the city with a massive aerial bombardment.
Year 1951
Korean War: Battle of Chipyong-ni, which represented the "high-water mark" of the Chinese incursion into South Korea, commences.
Year 1954
Frank Selvy becomes the only NCAA Division I basketball player ever to score 100 points in a single game.
Year 1960
With the success of a nuclear test codenamed "Gerboise Bleue", France becomes the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons.
Year 1960
Black college students stage the first of the Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee.
Year 1961
An allegedly 500,000-year-old rock is discovered near Olancha, California, US, that appears to anachronistically encase a spark plug.
Year 1967
American researchers discover the Madrid Codices by Leonardo da Vinci in the National Library of Spain.
Year 1978
Hilton bombing: a bomb explodes in a refuse truck outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia, killing two refuse collectors and a policeman.
Year 1979
An intense windstorm strikes western Washington and sinks a 1/2-mile-long section of the Hood Canal Bridge.
Year 1981
A series of sewer explosions destroys more than two miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky.
Year 1984
Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Year 1990
German reunification: An agreement is reached on a two-stage plan to reunite Germany.
Year 1991
Gulf War: Two laser-guided "smart bombs" destroy the Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad. Allied forces said the bunker was being used as a military communications outpost, but over 400 Iraqi civilians inside were killed.
Year 1996
The Nepalese Civil War is initiated in the Kingdom of Nepal by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist-Centre).
Year 2001
An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter magnitude scale hits El Salvador, killing at least 400.
Year 2004
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announces the discovery of the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093. Astronomers named this star "Lucy" after The Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".
Year 2007
Taiwan opposition leader Ma Ying-jeou resigns as the chairman of the Kuomintang party after being indicted on charges of embezzlement during his tenure as the mayor of Taipei; Ma also announces his candidacy for the 2008 presidential election.
Year 2008
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd makes a historic apology to the Indigenous Australians and the Stolen Generations.
Year 2010
A bomb explodes in the city of Pune, Maharashtra, India, killing 17 and injuring 60 more.
Year 2011
For the first time in more than 100 years the Umatilla, an American Indian tribe, are able to hunt and harvest a bison just outside Yellowstone National Park, restoring a centuries-old tradition guaranteed by a treaty signed in 1855.
Year 2012
The European Space Agency (ESA) conducted the first launch of the European Vega rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.