April 13 in History

Pope Victor II (c. 1018 – 28 July 1057), born Gebhard von Dollnstein-Hirschberg, was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 13 April 1055 until his death in 1057. Victor II was one of a series of German-born popes who led the Gregorian Reform.

Henry V (German: Heinrich V.; probably 11 August 1081 or 1086 – 23 May 1125) was King of Germany (from 1099 to 1125) and Holy Roman Emperor (from 1111 to 1125), as the fourth and last ruler of the Salian dynasty. He was made co-ruler by his father, Henry IV, in 1098. In Emperor Henry IV's conflicts with the imperial princes and the struggle against the reform papacy during the Investiture Controversy, young Henry V allied himself with the opponents of his father. He forced Henry IV to abdicate on 31 December 1105 and ruled for five years in compliance with the imperial princes. He tried, unsuccessfully, to withdraw the regalia from the bishops. Then in order to at least preserve the previous right to invest, he captured Pope Paschal II and forced him to perform his imperial coronation in 1111. Once crowned emperor, Henry departed from joint rule with the princes and resorted to earlier Salian autocratic rule. After he had failed to increase control over the church, the princes in Saxony and on the Middle and Lower Rhine, in 1121 the imperial princes forced Henry V to consent with the papacy. He surrendered to the demands of the second generation of Gregorian reformers, and in 1122 he and Pope Callixtus II ended the Investiture Controversy in the Concordat of Worms.

Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (c. 1137 – 4 March 1193), commonly known as Saladin, was the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty and the first sultan of both Egypt and Syria. A Sunni Muslim ruler of Kurdish origin, Saladin was an important figure of the Third Crusade and spearheaded the Muslim military effort against the Crusader states in the Levant. At the height of his power, the Ayyubid realm spanned Egypt, Syria, Upper Mesopotamia, the Hejaz, Yemen, and Nubia. Saladin was sent to Fatimid Egypt in 1164, alongside his uncle Shirkuh, a Kurdish mercenary commander in service of the Zengid dynasty, on the orders of Nur al-Din Zengi. With their original purpose being to help restore Shawar as the vizier to the teenage Fatimid caliph al-Adid, a power struggle ensued between Shirkuh and Shawar after the latter was reinstated. Saladin, meanwhile, climbed the ranks of the Fatimid government by virtue of his military successes against Crusader assaults and his personal closeness to al-Adid. After Shawar was assassinated and Shirkuh died in 1169, al-Adid appointed Saladin as vizier. During his tenure, Saladin, a Sunni Muslim, began to undermine the Fatimid establishment; following al-Adid's death in 1171, he abolished the Cairo-based Fatimid Caliphate which was an Isma'ili (a branch within Shi'a Islam) dynasty, and realigned Egypt with the Baghdad-based Sunni Abbasid Caliphate. In the following years, Saladin led forays against the Crusaders in Palestine, commissioned the successful conquest of Yemen, and staved off pro-Fatimid rebellions in Egypt. Not long after Nur ad-Din died in 1174, Saladin launched his conquest of Syria, peacefully entering Damascus at the request of its governor. By mid-1175, Saladin had conquered Hama and Homs, inviting the animosity of other Zengid lords, who were the official rulers of Syria's principalities; he subsequently defeated the Zengids at the Battle of the Horns of Hama in 1175 and was thereafter proclaimed the Sultan of Egypt and Syria by the Abbasid caliph al-Mustadi. Saladin launched further conquests in northern Syria and Upper Mesopotamia, escaping two attempts on his life by the Order of Assassins before returning to Egypt in 1177 to address local issues there. By 1182, Saladin had completed the conquest of Syria after capturing Aleppo but failed to take over the Zengid stronghold of Mosul. Under Saladin's command, the Ayyubid army defeated the Crusaders at the decisive Battle of Hattin in 1187, capturing Jerusalem and re-establishing Muslim military dominance in the Levant. Although the Crusaders' Kingdom of Jerusalem persisted until the late 13th century, the defeat in 1187 marked a turning point in the Christian military effort against Muslim powers in the region. Saladin died in Damascus in 1193, having given away much of his personal wealth to his subjects; he is buried in a mausoleum adjacent to the Umayyad Mosque. Alongside his significance to Muslim culture, Saladin is revered prominently in Kurdish, Turkic, Arab and even Western culture. He has frequently been described as the most famous Kurdish figure in history.

Constantinople, the modern Istanbul, was the capital of the Roman and Byzantine Empire from 330 until its takeover by the Ottoman Empire in 1453. After this, it continued to function as the Ottoman capital Konstantiniyye until the abolition of the Ottoman sultanate in 1922. It was located at the core of the modern city of Istanbul, on a peninsula at the southeastern tip of Thrace in Europe; with the Bosporus strait and the ancient cities of Chalcedon and Chrysopolis in Bithynia, Anatolia to the east; the Golden Horn and the citadel of Galata (Pera) to the north; the Sea of Marmara to the south; and the Princes' Islands to the southeast.

The Thirteen Years' War, also called the War of the Cities, was a conflict fought in 1454–1466 between the Prussian Confederation, allied with the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, and the State of the Teutonic Order.

Miyamoto Musashi was a Japanese swordsman, strategist, artist, and writer who became renowned through stories of his unique double-bladed swordsmanship and undefeated record in his 62 duels. Musashi is considered a kensei of Japan. He was the founder of the Niten Ichi-ryū style of swordsmanship. In his final years, Musashi authored The Book of Five Rings and Dokkōdō.

Sir Samuel Argall (b. c. 1572 or 1580 – d. 1626) was an English sea captain, navigator, and Deputy-Governour of Virginia, an English colony. As a sea captain, in 1609, Argall was the first to determine a shorter northern route from England across the Atlantic Ocean to the new English colony of Virginia, based at Jamestown, and made numerous voyages to the New World. He captained one of Lord De La Warr's ships in the successful rescue mission to Virginia in 1610 which saved the colony from starvation. In 1610 he named Delaware Bay in honor of Lord De La Warr. Shortly afterwards Dutch settlers along the bay gave it a different name, but the name Delaware Bay was restored when the English took control of the area in 1665. He is best known for his diplomacy by force with the Chief of the Powhatan Confederacy. He abducted the Chief's daughter, Pocahontas, on 13 April 1613, and held her as a captive at Henricus as security against the return of English captives and property held by Powhatan. Pocahontas had long been a friend of the English and was treated with great respect according to her rank, as the English considered her an Algonquian princess. Eventually peace and trade relations were restored between the English and the Powhatan Confederacy, after English planter John Rolfe, of nearby Varina Plantation, met and married Pocahontas. Argall was also successful in taking action against French efforts at colonisation in Acadia in North America, and in North Africa. London ruled that the French violated the Charter of the Virginia Company. Knighted by King James I after serving as Governor of the Virginia Colony, Argall was accused by planters of having been excessively stern in his treatment of them. Examinations of his conduct in London and the opinion of some modern historians have disputed these charges.

Sikhs (Gurmukhi: ਸਿੱਖ, romanized: Sikkh, Punjabi pronunciation: [sɪkkʰ]) are followers of Sikhism, a religion that originated in the late 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, based on the teachings of Guru Nanak. The term Sikh has its origin in the Sanskrit word śiṣya, meaning 'seeker', 'disciple' or 'student'. According to Article I of Chapter 1 of the Sikh Rehat Maryada ('code of conduct'), the definition of Sikh is: Any human being who faithfully believes in One Immortal Being Ten Gurus, from Guru Nanak Sahib to Guru Gobind Singh Sahib The Guru Granth Sahib The utterances and teachings of the ten Gurus and The initiation, known as the Amrit Sanchar, bequeathed by the tenth Guru and who does not owe allegiance to any other religion, is a Sikh. Male Sikhs generally have Singh ('lion') as their last name, though not all Singhs are necessarily Sikhs; likewise, female Sikhs generally have Kaur ('princess') as their last name. These unique last names were given by the Gurus to allow Sikhs to stand out and also as an act of defiance to India's caste system, which the Gurus were always against. Sikhs strongly believe in the idea of sarbat da bhala ('welfare of all') and are often seen on the frontline to provide humanitarian aid across the world. Sikhs who have undergone the Amrit Sanchar ('baptism by Khanda'), an initiation ceremony, are known as Khalsa from the day of their initiation and they must at all times have on their bodies the five Ks: kesh, uncut hair usually kept covered by a dastār, also known as a turban; kara, an iron or steel bracelet; kirpan, a dagger-like sword tucked into a gatra strap or a kamar kasa waistband; kachera, a cotton undergarment; and kanga, a small wooden comb. The Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent has been the historic homeland of the Sikhs, having even been ruled by the Sikhs for significant parts of the 18th and 19th centuries. Today, Canada has the largest national Sikh proportion (2.1%) in the world, while the Punjab state in India has the largest Sikh proportion (60%) amongst all administrative divisions in the world. With a population of approximately 25 to 30 million, Sikhs represent about 0.3% to 0.4% of the total world population in 2024. Many countries, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, recognise Sikhs as a designated religion on their censuses and, as of 2020, Sikhs are considered as a separate ethnic group in the United States. The UK also considers Sikhs to be an ethno-religious people, as a direct result of the Mandla v Dowell-Lee case in 1982.

George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer well-known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concerti.

The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence or simply the American Revolution, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which American Patriot forces organized as the Continental Army and, commanded by George Washington, defeated the British Army. The conflict was fought in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war's outcome seemed uncertain for most of the war, but Washington and the Continental Army's decisive victory in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 led King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain to negotiate an end to the war. In 1783, in the Treaty of Paris, the British monarchy acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation. In 1763, after the British Empire gained dominance in North America following its victory over the French in the Seven Years' War, tensions and disputes began escalating between the British and the Thirteen Colonies, especially following passage of the Stamp and Townshend Acts. The British Army responded by seeking to occupy Boston militarily, leading to the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. In mid-1774, with tensions escalating even further between the British Army and the colonies, the British Parliament imposed the Intolerable Acts, an attempt to disarm Americans, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the first battles of the Revolutionary War. In June 1775, the Second Continental Congress voted to incorporate colonial-based Patriot militias into a central military, the Continental Army, and unanimously appointed Washington its commander-in-chief. Two months later, in August 1775, George III declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion. In July 1776, the Second Continental Congress formalized the war, passing the Lee Resolution on July 2, and, two days later, unanimously adopting the Declaration of Independence, on July 4. In March 1776, in an early win for the newly-formed Continental Army under Washington's command, following a successful siege of Boston, the Continental Army successfully drove the British Army out of Boston. British commander in chief William Howe responded by launching the New York and New Jersey campaign, which resulted in Howe's capture of New York City in November. Washington responded by clandestinely crossing the Delaware River and winning small but significant victories at Trenton and Princeton. In the summer of 1777, as Howe was poised to capture Philadelphia, the Continental Congress fled to Baltimore. In October 1777, a separate northern British force under the command of John Burgoyne was forced to surrender at Saratoga in an American victory that proved crucial in convincing France and Spain that an independent United States was a viable possibility. France signed a commercial agreement with the revolutionaries, followed by a Treaty of Alliance in February 1778. In 1779, the Sullivan Expedition undertook a scorched earth campaign against British-allied factions of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (also Iroquois). Native American raids on the American frontier, however, continued to be a problem. Also, in 1779, Spain allied with France against Great Britain in the Treaty of Aranjuez, though Spain did not formally ally with the Americans. Howe's replacement Henry Clinton intended to take the war against the Americans into the Southern Colonies. Despite some initial success, British General Cornwallis was besieged by a Franco-American army in Yorktown, Virginia, in September and October 1781. The French navy cut off Cornwallis's escape and he was forced to surrender in October. The British wars with France and Spain continued for another two years, but fighting largely ceased in North America. In the Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, Great Britain acknowledged the sovereignty and independence of the United States, bringing the American Revolutionary War to an end. The Treaties of Versailles resolved Great Britain's conflicts with France and Spain, and forced Great Britain to cede Tobago, Senegal, and small territories in India to France, and Menorca, West Florida, and East Florida to Spain.

The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 (10 Geo. 4. c. 7), also known as the Catholic Emancipation Act 1829, was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that removed the sacramental tests that barred Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from Parliament and from higher offices of the judiciary and state. It was the culmination of a fifty-year process of Catholic emancipation during which Catholics had been progressively relieved of their civil and political disabilities under the penal laws of what had been, until 1801, the formally separate kingdoms of Great Britain and of Ireland. Convinced that the measure was essential to maintain order in Catholic-majority Ireland, the prime minister, the Duke of Wellington, helped to overcome the opposition of George IV and the House of Lords by threatening to resign and retire the Tory government he led in favour of what would have been a new, reform-minded Whig ministry. In Ireland the Protestant Ascendancy had the assurance of the simultaneous passage of the Parliamentary Elections (Ireland) Act 1829. Its substitution of the British ten-pound, for the Irish forty shilling, freehold qualification disenfranchised over eighty per cent of Ireland's electorate. This included a majority of the tenant farmers who had helped force the issue of emancipation in 1828 by electing to parliament the leader of the Catholic Association, Daniel O'Connell.

Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva (Hungarian: [ˈlɒjoʃ ˈkoʃut]; Hungarian: udvardi és kossuthfalvi Kossuth Lajos; Slovak: Ľudovít Košút; English: Louis Kossuth; 19 September 1802 – 20 March 1894) was a Hungarian nobleman, lawyer, journalist, politician, statesman, revolutionist and governor-president of the Hungarian State during the war of independence of 1848–1849. Kossuth, known for his public speaking skills, rose from a lesser noble (gentry) background to become regent-president during the 1848–1849 Hungarian revolution. As the influential contemporary American journalist Horace Greeley said of Kossuth: "Among the orators, patriots, statesmen, exiles, he has, living or dead, no superior." Kossuth's powerful speeches so impressed and touched the famous contemporary American orator Daniel Webster, that he wrote a book about Kossuth's life. During his lifetime, Kossuth was publicly honored in countries such as Great Britain and the United States, where he was viewed by some supporters as a symbol of democratic movements in Europe. Kossuth's bronze bust can be found in the United States Capitol with the inscription: Father of Hungarian Democracy, Hungarian Statesman, Freedom Fighter, 1848–1849. Friedrich Engels considered him to be "a truly revolutionary figure, a man who in the name of his people dares to accept the challenge of a desperate struggle, who for his nation is Danton and Carnot in one person ...".

The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States. The South saw slavery as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans. Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, a Republican who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven slave states in the South responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy seized US forts and other federal assets in the South. The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina. A wave of enthusiasm for war swept over the North and South, as military recruitment soared. Four more Southern states seceded after the war began and, led by its president, Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy comprised eleven states, containing a third of the US population. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued. During 1861–1862 in the western theater, the Union made permanent gains, though in the eastern theater the conflict was inconclusive. The abolition of slavery became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free, applying to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country. To the west, the Union first destroyed the Confederacy's river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River, while Confederate general Robert E. Lee's incursion north failed at the Battle of Gettysburg. General Ulysses S. Grant's western successes led Lincoln to promote him to command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, followed by his March to the Sea, which culminated in his taking Savannah. The last significant battles raged around the ten-month siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Confederates abandoned Richmond, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant following the Battle of Appomattox Court House, setting in motion the end of the war. Lincoln lived to see this victory but was shot by an assassin on April 14, dying the next day. By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure had been destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to rebuild the country, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant civil rights to freed slaves. The war is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in the history of the United States. It remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of continuing interest is the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The war was among the first to use industrial warfare. Railroads, the electrical telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced weapons were widely used. The war left an estimated 700,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian deaths, making it the deadliest in American history. The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming world wars.

Raleigh ( RAH-lee) is the capital city of the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the second-most populous city in the state (after Charlotte), tenth most populous city in the Southeast, the largest city in the Research Triangle area, and the 39th-most populous city in the U.S. Known as the "City of Oaks" for its oak-lined streets, Raleigh covers 148.54 square miles (384.7 km2) and had a population of 467,665 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Wake County and is named after Sir Walter Raleigh, who founded the lost Roanoke Colony. Raleigh is home to North Carolina State University and is part of the Research Triangle, which includes Durham (home to Duke University and North Carolina Central University) and Chapel Hill (home to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). The Research Triangle area, centered around Research Triangle Park, has a population of over 2.37 million people. The Raleigh–Cary metropolitan statistical area alone has an estimated population of 1.51 million. Raleigh lies primarily in Wake County, with a small portion of the city extending into Durham County. Nearby suburbs include Apex, Cary, Clayton, Fuquay-Varina, Garner, Holly Springs, Knightdale, Morrisville, Rolesville, Wake Forest, Wendell, and Zebulon. Raleigh is an early example in the United States of a planned city. Following the American Revolutionary War when the U.S. gained independence, the area was chosen as the site of the state capital in 1788 and incorporated in 1792 as such. The city was originally laid out in a grid pattern with the North Carolina State Capitol at the center, in Union Square. During the American Civil War, the city was spared from any significant battle. It fell to the Union in the closing days of the war and struggled with the economic hardships in the postwar period, related to the reconstitution of labor markets, over-reliance on agriculture, and the social unrest of the Reconstruction Era. The establishment of the Research Triangle Park in 1959 helped create thousands of jobs in the fields of science and technology.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the third-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. With 5,727,258 visitors in fiscal year 2025, it was the most-visited museum in the United States and the fifth-most visited art museum in the world.

The Colfax massacre, sometimes referred to as the Colfax riot, occurred on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana, the parish seat of Grant Parish. Between 62 and 153 black men were murdered while surrendering to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and members of the Ku Klux Klan. After the contested 1872 election for governor of Louisiana and local offices, a group of White men armed with rifles and a small cannon overpowered Black freedmen and state militia occupying the Grant Parish courthouse in Colfax. Most of the freedmen were killed after surrendering, and nearly another 50 were killed later that night after being held as prisoners for several hours. Three Whites died, but the number of Black victims was difficult to determine because many bodies were thrown into the Red River or removed for burial, possibly at mass graves. Historian Eric Foner describes the massacre as the worst instance of racial violence during Reconstruction. In Louisiana, it had the most fatalities of any of the numerous violent events occurring after the disputed gubernatorial contest in 1872 between Republicans and Democrats. Foner writes "...every election [in Louisiana] between 1868 and 1876 was marked by rampant violence and pervasive fraud". Although the Fusionist-dominated state "returning board," which ruled on vote validity, initially declared John McEnery and his Democratic slate the winners, the board eventually divided, with a faction declaring Republican William P. Kellogg the victor. A Republican federal judge in New Orleans ruled that the Republican-majority legislature be seated. Federal prosecution and conviction of a few perpetrators at Colfax by the Enforcement Acts was appealed to the Supreme Court. In a major case, the court ruled in United States v. Cruikshank (1876) that protections of the Fourteenth Amendment did not apply to persons acting individually, but only to the actions of state governments. After this ruling, the federal government could no longer use the Enforcement Act of 1870 to prosecute actions by paramilitary groups such as the White League, which had chapters forming across Louisiana beginning in 1874. Intimidation, murders, and Black voter suppression by such paramilitary groups were instrumental to the Democratic Party regaining political control of the state legislature by the late 1870s. During the late 20th and early 21st centuries, historians have given renewed attention to the events at Colfax and the resulting Supreme Court case.

The 31 March incident (Turkish: 31 Mart Vakası) was an uprising in the Ottoman Empire in April 1909, during the Second Constitutional Era. The incident broke out during the night of 30–31 Mart 1325 in Rumi calendar (GC 12–13 April 1909), thus named after 31 March where March is the equivalent to Rumi month Mart. Occurring soon after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, in which the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) had successfully restored the Constitution and ended the absolute rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876–1909), it is sometimes referred to as an attempted countercoup or counterrevolution. It consisted of a general uprising against the CUP within Constantinople, largely led by reactionary groups, particularly Islamists opposed to the secularising influence of the CUP and supporters of absolutism, although liberal opponents of the CUP within the Liberty Party also played a lesser role. Eleven days later the uprising was suppressed and the former government restored when elements of the Ottoman Army sympathetic to the CUP formed an impromptu military force known as the Action Army (Hareket Ordusu). Upon entering Constantinople on 24 April Sultan Abdul Hamid II, accused by the CUP of complicity in the uprising, was deposed and the Ottoman National Assembly elevated his half-brother, Mehmed V, to the throne. Mahmud Shevket Pasha, the military general who had organised and led the Action Army, became the most influential figure in the restored constitutional system until his assassination in 1913. The precise nature of events is uncertain; differing interpretations have been offered by historians, ranging from a spontaneous revolt of discontents to a secretly planned and coordinated counter-revolution against the CUP. Most modern studies disregard claims the sultan was actively involved in plotting the uprising, emphasising the CUP's mismanagement of troops in the build up to the mutiny and the role of conservative religious groups. The crisis was an important early moment in the empire's process of disintegration, setting a pattern of political instability which continued with military coups in 1912 and 1913. The temporary loss of power led to radicalisation within the CUP, resulting in an increasing willingness among Unionists to utilise violence. Some scholars have argued that the deterioration of ethnic relations and erosion of public institutions during 1908–1909 precipitated the Armenian genocide. The crisis also represented the demise of the Sultanate's power in the Ottoman Empire, as a series of constitutional amendments confined its function in government to the confirmation of parliamentary decisions, conversely cementing parliament's supremacy in a significant step of republicanism in Turkish political history.

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre (IPA: [dʒəlɪjãːʋaːlaː baːɣ, baːɡ]), also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place on 13 April 1919. A large crowd had gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab, British India, during the annual Baisakhi fair to protest against the Rowlatt Act and the arrest of pro-Indian independence activists Saifuddin Kitchlew and Satyapal. In response to the public gathering, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer surrounded the people with Gurkhas of Nepalese origin and Sikh infantrymen of the British Indian Army. The Jallianwala Bagh could only be exited on one side, as its other three sides were enclosed by buildings. After blocking the exit with his troops, Dyer ordered them to shoot at the crowd, continuing to fire even as the protestors tried to flee. The troops kept on firing until their ammunition was low and they were ordered to stop. Estimates of those killed vary from 379 to 1,500 or more people; over 1,200 others were injured, of whom 192 sustained serious injury. Britain has never formally apologised for the massacre, but expressed deep "regret" in 2019. The massacre caused a re-evaluation by the Imperial British military of its role when confronted with civilians to use "minimal force whenever possible" (although the British Army was not directly involved in the massacre; the British Indian Army was a separate organisation). However, in the light of later British military actions during the Mau Mau rebellion in the Kenya Colony, historian Huw Bennett has pointed out that this new policy was not always followed. The army was retrained with less violent tactics for crowd control. The level of casual brutality and the lack of any accountability stunned the entire nation, resulting in a wrenching loss of faith of the general Indian public in the intentions of the United Kingdom. The attack was condemned by the Secretary of State for War, Winston Churchill, as "unutterably monstrous", and in the UK House of Commons debate on 8 July 1920 Members of Parliament voted 247 to 37 against Dyer. The ineffective inquiry, together with the initial accolades for Dyer, fuelled great widespread anger against the British among the Indian populace, leading to the non-cooperation movement of 1920–22.

A.E.K. (Greek: AEK [ˈaek], formally Αθλητική Ένωσις Κωνσταντινουπόλεως; Athlitikí Énosis Konstantinoupόleos, Athletic Union of Constantinople) is the most successful and a major Greek multi-sport club, based in Nea Filadelfeia, Athens. The club is more commonly known in European competitions as A.E.K. Athens. The club's emblem is the double-headed eagle, the symbol of Palaiologos dynasty and the Byzantine Empire, their colours yellow and black, also inspired by the Byzantine Empire, serving to remind future generations of the glorious legacy of the Greeks of Constantinople. Established in Athens on 13 April 1924, by Greek refugees from Constantinople, after the 1919–22 Greco-Turkish war, AEK maintains more than 30 sports departments (football, basketball, handball, volleyball, futsal, etc.), under the control of its amateur sports arm, Amateur AEK (Greek: Ερασιτεχνική ΑΕΚ; Erasitechnikί AEK), with noteworthy departments, such as its handball team, which is the best Greek handball club, in terms of European achievements, having won 1 EHF European Cup in 2021 and having also reached the final twice, in 2018 and in 2025 and the semi-finals in 2019, moreover, in 2021, it became the first Greek handball team to win the treble, while also marking the first treble in the sports club's history. Furthermore, its women's volleyball team, which has won several domestic titles and 1 Balkans title, the BVA Cup in 2025. At the same time, AEK have won numerous domestic titles across all of its sports departments, youth academies, as well as hundreds of first-place finishes in individual sports and have made notable participations in international competitions. AEK are best known for its professional football team, which has made some notable appearances and wins in European competitions and have reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Europa League in 1977. AEK are the only Greek football club that have advanced to the quarter-finals of all European competitions (UEFA Champions League in 1969, UEFA Europa League in 1977, UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1997 and in 1998 and UEFA Conference League in 2026), having also won 14 Greek Championships, 16 Greek Cups, 1 Greek League Cup and 2 Greek Super Cups. AEK are also known for its professional basketball team which has won 2 Saporta Cups, 1 Champions League, 1 FIBA Intercontinental Cup, 8 Greek Championships and 5 Greek Cups. AEK are one of the most popular Greek clubs, and has a strong fanbase all over the world with well over 1 million supporters.

The Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact (日ソ中立条約, Nisso Chūritsu Jōyaku), also known as the Japanese–Soviet Non-aggression Pact (日ソ不可侵条約, Nisso Fukashin Jōyaku), was a non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan signed on April 13, 1941, two years after the conclusion of the Soviet-Japanese Border War. The agreement meant that for most of World War II, the two nations fought against each other's allies but not against each other. In 1945, late in the war, the Soviets scrapped the pact and joined the Allied campaign against Japan.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

The Thomas Jefferson Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C., built in honor of Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the nation's third president. Built between 1939 and 1943, the memorial features multiple quotes from Jefferson intended to capture his ideology and philosophy, known as Jeffersonian democracy. Jefferson was widely considered among the most influential political minds of his era and one of the most consequential intellectual forces behind both the American Revolution and the American Enlightenment. The Jefferson Memorial is built in neoclassical style and is situated in West Potomac Park on the shore of the Potomac River. It was designed by John Russell Pope, a New York City architect, and built by Philadelphia contractor John McShain. Construction on the memorial began in 1939 and was completed in 1943, though the bronze statue of Jefferson was not completed and added until four years after its dedication and opening, in 1947. Pope made references to the Roman Pantheon, whose designer was Apollodorus of Damascus, and to Jefferson's own design for the rotunda at the University of Virginia as inspirations for the memorial's aesthetics. The Jefferson Memorial and the White House form anchor points to the National Mall in Washington, D.C.. The Jefferson Memorial is a designated national memorial and is managed by the National Park Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior's National Mall and Memorial Parks division. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and ranked fourth on the American Institute of Architects' "list of America's favorite architecture".

Nazi Germany, officially the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", was the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and the German Empire (1871–1918); the Nazis called it the Thousand-Year Reich, but it ended just 12 years later in May 1945, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered Berlin, ending World War II in Europe. After Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the Nazi Party began to eliminate political opposition and consolidate power. A 1934 referendum confirmed Hitler as sole Führer (leader). Power was centralised in Hitler's person, and his word became the highest law. The government was not a coordinated, cooperating body, but rather a collection of factions struggling to amass power. To address the Great Depression, the Nazis used heavy military spending, extensive public works projects, including the Autobahnen (motorways), and a massive secret rearmament programme, forming the Wehrmacht (armed forces), all financed by deficit spending. The return to economic stability and end of mass unemployment boosted the regime's popularity. Hitler made increasingly aggressive territorial demands, seizing Austria in the Anschluss of 1938 and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union and invaded Poland in 1939, launching World War II in Europe. In alliance with Fascist Italy and other Axis powers, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940, but failed to subdue Britain. Racism, Nazi eugenics, anti-Slavism, and especially antisemitism were central ideological features of the regime. The Nazis considered Germanic peoples to be the "master race", the purest branch of the Aryan race. Jews, Slavs, Romani people, homosexuals, liberals, socialists, communists, other political opponents, Jehovah's Witnesses, Freemasons, those who refused to work and other "undesirables" were imprisoned, deported or murdered. Christian churches and citizens that opposed Hitler's rule were oppressed and opposition leaders were imprisoned. Education focused on racial biology, population policy and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed. The Nazi Propaganda Ministry disseminated films and antisemitic canards, and organised mass rallies, fostering a pervasive cult of personality around Hitler to influence public opinion. The government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. Genocide, mass murder and large-scale forced labour became hallmarks of the regime; the implementation of its racial policies culminated in the Holocaust. After invading the Soviet Union in 1941, Nazi Germany implemented the Generalplan Ost and Hunger Plan, as part of its war of extermination in Eastern Europe. The Soviet resurgence and entry of the United States into the war meant Germany lost the initiative in 1943, and by late 1944, had been pushed back to the 1939 border. Large-scale aerial bombing of Germany escalated, and the Axis powers were driven back in Eastern and Southern Europe. Germany was conquered by the Soviet Union from the east and the other allies from the west, and capitulated in 1945. Hitler's refusal to admit defeat led to massive destruction of German infrastructure and additional war-related deaths in the closing months of the war. The Allies subsequently initiated a policy of denazification and put many of the surviving Nazi leadership on trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from its formation in 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's third-most populous country, the largest by area, and bordered twelve other countries. A diverse multinational state, it was organized as a federal union of national republics, with the largest and most populous being the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR). The world's flagship communist state, it was governed by the Communist Party under Marxism–Leninism, through soviet councils. The Soviet economy was also centrally planned. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.

Hadassah Medical Center is an Israeli medical organization established in 1934 that operates two university hospitals in Jerusalem as well as schools of medicine, dentistry, nursing, and pharmacology affiliated with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Its mission is to extend a "hand to all, without regard for race, religion or ethnic origin."

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and conducting covert operations. The agency is headquartered in the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia, and is sometimes metonymously called "Langley". A major member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA has reported to the director of national intelligence since 2004, and is focused on providing intelligence for the president and the Cabinet, though it also provides intelligence for a variety of other entities including the United States Armed Forces and foreign allies.

The 36th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 1963, were held on April 13, 1964, hosted by Jack Lemmon at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California. This ceremony introduced the category for Best Sound Effects, with It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World being the first film to win the award. Best Picture winner Tom Jones is the only film to date to receive three Best Supporting Actress nominations; it also tied the Oscar record of five unsuccessful acting nominations, set by Peyton Place at the 30th Academy Awards. Patricia Neal won Best Actress for her role in Hud, despite having a relatively small amount of screen time. Melvyn Douglas won Best Supporting Actor for the same film, making it the second and, to date, last film to win two acting awards without being nominated for Best Picture (the other being The Miracle Worker the previous year). At age 71, Margaret Rutherford set a then-record as the oldest winner for Best Supporting Actress, a year after Patty Duke set a then-record as the youngest winner. Rutherford was also only the second Oscar winner over the age of 70 (the other was Edmund Gwenn), as well as the last person born in the 19th century to win an acting Oscar. This was the only year in Academy history that all Best Supporting Actress nominees were born outside the United States. Sidney Poitier became the first African American actor to win Best Actor, and was the only winner in an acting category present at the ceremony, as all the other winners were abroad. Upon receiving the wrong envelope, Sammy Davis Jr. remarked, "wait until the NAACP hears about this!" An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge was the first Oscar-winning film to have aired on network television prior to the ceremony.

Oxygen is a chemical element; it has the symbol O and its atomic number is 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table. It is highly reactive, a nonmetal, and a potent oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as well as with other compounds. Oxygen is the most abundant element in Earth's crust, making up almost half of the Earth's crust in the form of various oxides such as water, carbon dioxide, iron oxides, and silicates. It is also the third-most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen and helium.

The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina wars and a proxy war of the Cold War. The Vietnam War was one of the postcolonial wars of national liberation, a theater in the Cold War, and a civil war, with civil warfare a defining feature from the outset. Direct US military involvement escalated from 1965 until US forces were withdrawn in 1973. The fighting spilled into the Laotian and Cambodian civil wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.

The 1975 Beirut bus massacre, also known as the Ain el-Rammaneh incident and Black Sunday, was the collective name given to a short series of armed clashes involving Phalangist and Palestinian elements in the streets of central Beirut, which is commonly presented as the spark that set off the Lebanese Civil War in the mid-1970s.

The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States. It is one of 15 current U.S. government departments. The treasury executes currency circulation in the domestic fiscal system, collects all federal taxes through the Internal Revenue Service, manages U.S. government debt, licenses and supervises banks and thrift institutions, and advises the legislative and executive branches on fiscal policy.

The Mansouri attack occurred on 13 April 1996, when an Israel Defence Forces helicopter attacked an ambulance in Mansouri, a village in Southern Lebanon, killing two women and four children.

Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods is an American professional golfer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time and as one of the most famous athletes in modern history. Woods is tied for first in PGA Tour wins, ranks second in men's major championships, holds numerous golf records, and is an inductee of the World Golf Hall of Fame.

The Kamień Pomorski homeless hostel fire occurred in north-western Poland on 13 April 2009. The fire occurred during the night at a three-story homeless hostel in Kamień Pomorski. Twenty-three people, including 13 children, were pronounced dead, with a further 20 sustaining an injury of some sort. It was Poland's deadliest fire since a conflagration destroyed a home for the mentally ill in Górna Grupa in 1980 claiming the lives of 55 victims.

Salam Fayyad is a Palestinian politician and economist who served as the first prime minister of Palestine from January 2013 until his resignation in June of that same year. He was previously the fourth prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority from 2007 until the post was replaced in 2013. He was minister of finance from June to November 2005 and from March 2007 to May 2012.

Lion Air Flight 904 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Husein Sastranegara International Airport in Bandung to Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali, Indonesia. On 13 April 2013, the Boeing 737-800 operating the flight crashed into water short of the runway while on final approach to land. All 101 passengers and 7 crew on board survived the accident. At 3:10 p.m., the aircraft crashed approximately 1.1 kilometres (0.6 nmi) short of the seawall protecting the threshold of Runway 09. The aircraft's fuselage broke into two and 46 people were injured, 4 of them seriously.

On 13 April 2024, a mass stabbing occurred at the Westfield Bondi Junction shopping centre in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Six people were killed and twelve were injured, including a nine-month-old infant before the perpetrator, 40-year-old Joel Cauchi, was fatally shot by an NSW Police Inspector after he ran at her with a knife in hand.

Rory Daniel McIlroy is a Northern Irish professional golfer who plays on the PGA Tour and the European Tour. He is a former world number one in the Official World Golf Ranking and has spent over 100 weeks in that position during his career. A six-time major champion, he is the sixth man to complete the modern career grand slam—after Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods—and the first European to do so.