December 13 in History

Salerno is a city and comune (municipality) in the region of Campania in southern Italy, and the capital of the province of the same name. As of 2026, with a population of 125,323, it is the 3rd most populous city in the region after Naples and Giugliano in Campania. The city lies on the Gulf of Salerno, on the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Pope Celestine V (Latin: Caelestinus V; 1209/1210 or 1215 – 19 May 1296), born Pietro Angelerio (according to some sources Angelario, Angelieri, Angelliero, or Angeleri), also known as Pietro da Morrone, Peter of Morrone, and Peter Celestine, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States for five months from 5 July to 13 December 1294, when he abdicated. He was also a monk and hermit who founded the order of the Celestines as a branch of the Benedictine order. He was elected pope in the Catholic Church's last non-conclave papal election, ending a two-year impasse. Among the few edicts of his to remain in force is the confirmation of the right of the pope to abdicate; nearly all of his other official acts were annulled by his successor, Boniface VIII. On 13 December 1294, a week after issuing the decree, Celestine resigned, stating his desire to return to his humble, pre-papal life. He was subsequently imprisoned by Boniface in the castle of Fumone in the Lazio region, in order to prevent his potential installation as antipope. He died in prison on 19 May 1296. Celestine was canonized on 5 May 1313 by Pope Clement V. No subsequent pope has taken the name Celestine.

The Council of Trent (Latin: Concilium Tridentinum), held between 1545 and 1563 in Trent (or Trento), in Northern Italy, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation at the time, it has been described as the "most characteristic embodiment of the ideals of the Counter-Reformation." It was the last time a Catholic ecumenical council was organized outside the city of Rome, and the second time a council was convened in the territory of the Holy Roman Empire (the first being the Council of Constance). The council issued key statements and clarifications of the Catholic Church's doctrine and teachings, including scripture, the biblical canon, sacred tradition, original sin, justification, salvation, the sacraments, the Mass, and the veneration of saints and also issued condemnations of what it defined to be heresies committed by proponents of Protestantism. The consequences of the council were also significant with regard to the Catholic Church's liturgy and censorship. The council met for twenty-five sessions between 13 December 1545 and 4 December 1563. Pope Paul III, who convoked the council, oversaw the first eight sessions (1545–1547), while the twelfth to sixteenth sessions (1551–52) were overseen by Pope Julius III and the seventeenth to twenty-fifth sessions (1562–63) by Pope Pius IV. More than three hundred years passed until the next ecumenical council, the First Vatican Council, was convened in 1869.

Sir Francis Drake (c. 1540 – 28 January 1596) was an English explorer and privateer known for making the second circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition between 1577 and 1580 (being the first English expedition to accomplish this). He is also known for participating in the early English slaving voyages of his cousin, John Hawkins, and John Lovell. Having started as a simple seaman, in 1588 he was part of the fight against the Spanish Armada as a vice admiral. At an early age, Drake was placed into the household of a relative, William Hawkins, a prominent sea captain in Plymouth. In 1572, he set sail on his first independent mission, privateering along the Spanish Main. Drake's circumnavigation began on 13 December 1577. He crossed the Pacific Ocean, until then an area of exclusive Spanish interest, and laid claim to New Albion, plundering coastal towns and ships for treasure and supplies as he went. He arrived back in England on 26 September 1580. Elizabeth I awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581 which he received aboard his galleon the Golden Hind. Drake's circumnavigation of the Earth inaugurated an era of conflict with the Spanish and in 1585, the Anglo-Spanish War began. Drake was in command of an expedition to the Americas that attacked Spanish shipping and ports. When Philip II sent the Spanish Armada to England in 1588 as a precursor to its invasion, Drake was second-in-command of the English fleet that fought against and repulsed the Spanish fleet. A year later he led the English Armada in a failed attempt to destroy the remaining Spanish fleet. Drake was a Member of Parliament (MP) for three constituencies: Camelford in 1581, Bossiney in 1584, and Plymouth in 1593. Drake's exploits made him a hero to the English, but his privateering led the Spanish to brand him a pirate, known to them as El Draque ("The Dragon" in old Spanish). He died of dysentery after his failed assault on Panama in January 1596.

Plymouth Colony was the first permanent English colony in New England, founded in 1620, and the third permanent English colony in America, after Newfoundland and the Jamestown Colony. It was settled by the passengers on the Mayflower at a location that had previously been surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement served as the capital of the colony and developed as the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. At its height, Plymouth Colony occupied most of what is now the southeastern portion of Massachusetts; it was approximately coterminous with the combined territories of Plymouth, Barnstable, and Bristol Counties, all of which were originally established by the General Court of the Plymouth Colony. Many of the people and events surrounding Plymouth Colony have become part of American folklore, including the American tradition of Thanksgiving and the monument of Plymouth Rock.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony settlement on the east coast of North America around Massachusetts Bay, a territory inhabited by Algonquian Native American tribes. The colony was in a territory the colonists called New England, with initial settlements on two natural harbors and surrounding land about 15.4 miles (24.8 km) apart—the areas around Salem and Boston, north of the previously established Plymouth Colony. The territory nominally administered by the Massachusetts Bay Colony covered much of central New England, including portions of what are now Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. The territory of the Massachusetts Bay colony was one of the several colonial territories reorganized as the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1691.

Abel Janszoon Tasman (Dutch: [ˈaːbəl ˈjɑnszoːn ˈtɑsmɑn]; 1603 – 10 October 1659) was a Dutch seafarer and explorer, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He was the first European to reach New Zealand, which he named Staten Landt. He also discovered and was the eponym of Tasmania. Likely born in 1602 or 1603 in Lutjegast, Netherlands, Tasman started his career as a merchant seaman and became a skilled navigator. In 1633, he joined the VOC and sailed to Batavia, now Jakarta, Indonesia. He participated in several voyages, including one to Japan. In 1642, Tasman was appointed by the VOC to lead an expedition to explore the uncharted regions of the southern Pacific Ocean. His mission was to discover new trade routes and to establish trade relations with the native inhabitants. After leaving Batavia, Tasman sailed westward to Mauritius, then south to the Roaring Forties, then eastward, and reached the coast of Tasmania, which he named Van Diemen's Land after his patron, Anthony van Diemen. He then sailed northeast, and was the first European to discover the west coast of New Zealand, which he named Staten Landt. It was later renamed Nieuw Zeeland, after the Dutch province of Zeeland, by Joan Blaeu, official Dutch cartographer to the Dutch East India Company. Despite his achievements, Tasman's expedition was not entirely successful. The encounter with the Māori people on the South Island of New Zealand resulted in a violent confrontation, which left four of Tasman's men dead. He returned to Batavia without having made any significant contact with the native inhabitants or establishing any trade relations. Tasman continued to serve the Dutch East India Company until his death in 1659. More than a century later, knowledge from Tasman's expeditions was used by James Cook, leading to exploration and colonization of Australia and New Zealand by the British.

The English Civil War or Great Rebellion was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Royalists and Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the struggle consisted of the First English Civil War and the Second English Civil War. The Anglo-Scottish war of 1650 to 1652 is sometimes referred to as the Third English Civil War. The English Civil War also had a significant influence on the development of the English language. The conflict popularized political terms that are still used today, such as "Cavalier" for supporters of King Charles I and "Roundhead" for supporters of Parliament. The 1640s also saw a massive increase in the production of pamphlets, newsbooks, and political tracts, which is considered one of the first examples of mass communication in English. This period helped expand political vocabulary and introduced new words related to democracy, liberty, and religious toleration into everyday English.

Dartmouth College ( DART-məth) is a private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock and Samson Occom to train Native American Christian missionaries, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Following a liberal arts curriculum, Dartmouth provides undergraduate instruction in 40 academic departments and interdisciplinary programs, including 60 majors in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering. In addition to the undergraduate faculty of arts and sciences, Dartmouth has four professional and graduate schools: the Geisel School of Medicine, the Thayer School of Engineering, the Tuck School of Business, and the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies. The university also has affiliations with the Dartmouth–Hitchcock Medical Center. Dartmouth is home to the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences, the Hood Museum of Art, the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, and the Hopkins Center for the Arts. With a student enrollment of about 6,700, Dartmouth is the smallest university in the Ivy League. Undergraduate admissions are highly selective with an acceptance rate of 5.3% for the class of 2028, including a 3.8% rate for regular decision applicants. Situated on a terrace above the Connecticut River, Dartmouth's 269-acre (109 ha) main campus is in the rural Upper Valley region of New England. The university functions on a quarter system, operating year-round on four ten-week academic terms. Dartmouth is known for its undergraduate focus, Greek culture, outdoors activities, and campus traditions. Its 34 varsity sports teams compete intercollegiately in the Ivy League conference of the NCAA Division I. The university has many prominent alumni, including 170 members of the United States Congress, 25 U.S. governors, 8 U.S. Cabinet secretaries, 3 Nobel Prize laureates, 2 U.S. Supreme Court justices, and a U.S. vice president.

Cyril VI of Constantinople (Greek: Κύριλλος), lay name Konstantinos Serpentzoglou (Κωνσταντῖνος Σερπεντζόγλου), was the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople between the years 1813 and 1818.

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 Southern 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 as president in 1860 and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with a Union victory, dissolution of the Confederacy and the national abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans. Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when 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. The Confederate States seized United States forts and other federal assets in the South. The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederate States 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 Confederate 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. Union 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 Union blockade of Confederate ports, the Union army marshaled resources and the manpower to attack the Confederate States army from all directions. That 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 (except as punishment for a crime) and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to rebuild the country, reunite by bringing the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant civil rights to freed black slaves. The war is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in the history of the United States, and it remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Interest continues in 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 U.S. history. The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming world wars.

Sherman's March to the Sea, officially known as the Savannah campaign, or simply Sherman's March, was a military campaign of the American Civil War conducted through Georgia from November 15 until December 21, 1864, by United States Army major general William T. Sherman. It began on November 15 with Sherman's troops leaving Atlanta, recently taken by Union forces under Sherman, and ended with the capture of the port of Savannah on December 21. Emulating the chevauchée of medieval European warfare, his forces followed a "scorched earth" policy, destroying military targets as well as industry, infrastructure, and civilian property, disrupting the Confederacy's economy and transportation networks. The operation debilitated the Confederacy and helped lead to its eventual demise. Sherman's decision to operate deep within enemy territory without supply lines was unusual for its time, and his campaign of "hard war" is regarded by some historians as an early example of total war in modern warfare. Following the March to the Sea, Sherman's army headed north for the Carolinas campaign. The portion of this march through South Carolina was even more destructive than the Savannah campaign, since Sherman and his men harbored much ill-will for that state's part in bringing on the Civil War. The following portion, through North Carolina however, was less so.

The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan and its puppet states between 1937 and 1945, following a period of conflict localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia, as the wars became heavily intertwined after Japan attacked the United States. It was the largest Asian war in the 20th century. On 18 September 1931, the Japanese staged the Mukden incident, a false flag event fabricated to justify their invasion of Manchuria and establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo. This is sometimes marked as the beginning of the war. From 1931 to 1937, China and Japan engaged in skirmishes, including in Shanghai and in Northern China. Nationalist and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces, respectively led by Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, had fought each other in the Chinese Civil War since 1927. In late 1933, Chiang Kai-shek encircled the Chinese Communists in an attempt to finally destroy them, forcing the Communists into the Long March, resulting in the Communists losing around 90% of their men. As a Japanese invasion became imminent, Chiang eventually formed a United Front with the Communists in 1936, a process that was hastened by the Xi'an Incident. The war is considered to have begun on 7 July 1937 after the Marco Polo Bridge incident near Beijing, which escalated into full-scale Japanese invasion of the rest of China. Following the protracted Battle of Shanghai, the Japanese captured the capital of Nanjing in 1937 and perpetrated the Nanjing Massacre. After failing to stop the Japanese capture of Wuhan in 1938, China's de facto capital at the time, the Nationalist government relocated to Chongqing in the Chinese interior. After the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, Soviet aid bolstered the National Revolutionary Army and Air Force. By 1939, after Chinese victories at Changsha and with Japan's lines of communication stretched deep into the interior, the war reached a stalemate. The Japanese were unable to defeat CCP forces in Shaanxi, who waged a campaign of sabotage and guerrilla warfare. In November 1939, Nationalist forces launched a large scale winter offensive, and in August 1940, CCP forces launched the Hundred Regiments Offensive in central China. In retaliation, Japanese forces implemented massive scorched earth policies in North and Central China, killing millions of civilians. In April 1941, Soviet aid was halted with the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and declared war on the United States and the United Kingdom. The US increased its aid to China under the Lend-Lease Act, becoming its main financial and military supporter. The British Empire supported the Chinese forces against Japan by sending supplies through the Burma Road, linking British colonies in India and Burma to China. Chinese forces also fought with British Empire forces against the Japanese in the Burma campaign to restore Allied usage after the Japanese occupied most of the Burma Road. With Burma cut off, the United States Army Air Forces airlifted material over the Himalayas. In 1944, Japan launched Operation Ichi-Go, the invasion of Henan and Changsha. In 1945, the Chinese Expeditionary Force resumed its advance in Burma and completed the Ledo Road linking India to China. China launched large counteroffensives in South China, repulsed a failed Japanese invasion of West Hunan, and recaptured Japanese occupied regions of Guangxi. Japan formally surrendered on 2 September 1945, following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Soviet declaration of war and subsequent invasion of Manchuria, Inner Mongolia and Korea. The war resulted in the deaths of around 20 million people, mostly Chinese civilians. Japan carried out the largest attacks in the history of biological warfare, causing at least 200,000 deaths, and used chemical weapons including lethal blister agents. China was recognized as one of the Big Four Allied powers in World War II and one of the "Four Policemen", which formed the foundation of the United Nations. It regained Taiwan and became one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. The Japanese surrender ceremony that ended World War II in China, occurred in Nanjing on 9 September 1945. The forces of the Imperial Japanese Army agreed with the Allies terms to cease all armed conflict in the Pacific. During the 15-minute ceremony, General Yasuji Okamura, Commander-in-Chief of the China Expeditionary Army of the Imperial Japanese Army, signed the surrender document which was written in both Japanese and Chinese. The unconditional surrender was overseen and accepted by Kuomintang General He Yingqin, the Chinese representative of Allies of World War II and the commander-in-chief of the Republic of China National Revolutionary Army and British Major-General Eric Hayes. The Chinese Civil War resumed in 1946, ending with a communist victory and the Proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, while the government of the Republic of China relocated to Taiwan.

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.

The Battle of the River Plate was fought in the South Atlantic on 13 December 1939 as the first British naval battle of the Second World War. The Kriegsmarine heavy cruiser Admiral Graf Spee, commanded by Captain Hans Langsdorff, engaged a Royal Navy squadron, commanded by Commodore Henry Harwood, comprising the light cruisers HMS Ajax, HMNZS Achilles (on loan to the New Zealand Division) and the heavy cruiser HMS Exeter. Graf Spee had sailed into the South Atlantic in August 1939, before the war began, and had begun commerce raiding after receiving authorisation on 26 September 1939. Harwood's squadron was one of several search groups sent in pursuit by the British Admiralty and sighted Graf Spee off the estuary of the River Plate (a.k.a. the Río de la Plata) near the coasts of Argentina and Uruguay. In the ensuing battle, Exeter was severely damaged and forced to retire, making for the Falklands; Ajax and Achilles suffered moderate damage. Damage to Graf Spee, although not extensive, was critical because her fuel system was crippled. Ajax and Achilles shadowed the German ship until she entered the port of Montevideo, the capital of neutral Uruguay, to effect urgent repairs. Langsdorff was told that his stay could not be extended beyond 72 hours. Apparently believing that the British had gathered a superior force to await his departure, he ordered for the ship to be scuttled on 17 December. Langsdorff died by suicide two days later.

The Kalavryta massacre (Greek: Σφαγή των Καλαβρύτων), or the Holocaust of Kalavryta (Ολοκαύτωμα των Καλαβρύτων), was the near-extermination of the male population and the total destruction of the town of Kalavryta, Axis-occupied Greece, by the 117th Jäger Division (Wehrmacht) during World War II, on 13 December 1943.

The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel.

The archbishop of Cyprus is the head of the Church of Cyprus. Since 2023 the incumbent archbishop has been George III.

The emperor of Ethiopia, also known as the Atse, was the hereditary ruler of the Ethiopian Empire, from at least the 13th century until the abolition of the monarchy in 1975. The emperor was the head of state and head of government, with ultimate executive, judicial and legislative power in that country. A National Geographic article from 1965 called Imperial Ethiopia "nominally a constitutional monarchy; in fact it was a benevolent autocracy".

Constantine II was the last King of Greece, reigning from 6 March 1964 until the abolition of the Greek monarchy on 1 June 1973.

Artur da Costa e Silva (Portuguese: [aʁˈtuʁ dɐ ˈkɔstɐ i ˈsiwvɐ]; 3 October 1899 – 17 December 1969) was a Brazilian Army Marshal and the second president of the Brazilian military government that came to power after the 1964 coup d'état. He reached the rank of Marshal of the Brazilian Army, and held the post of Minister of War in the military government of president Castelo Branco. His administration, following the enactment of Institutional Act 5 (AI-5), marked the beginning of the harshest and most brutal phase of the military dictatorship, which was continued by General Emílio Garrastazu Médici, his successor. AI-5 granted him the power to shut down the National Congress, remove politicians from office, and institutionalize repression in response to the growing opposition to the regime. This repression was carried out through both legal and illegal means, including the torture of civilians. Costa e Silva's government was also characterized by a 15.72% growth in GDP (an average of 7.86%) and a 10.68% increase in per capita income (an average of 5.34%), thanks to the Government Economic Action Program (PAEG). Costa e Silva took office with inflation at 25.01% and left it at 19.31%, during a period known as the Brazilian economic miracle, which lasted from 1968 to 1973.

The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. The Apollo program was conceived in 1960 in the Dwight D. Eisenhower presidency during Project Mercury and executed after Project Gemini. The Apollo program was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in his address to the U.S. Congress on May 25, 1961.

Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country located in the central Mediterranean Sea. It consists of a number of islands, of which Malta and Gozo are the two main ones—south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. Valletta is the country's capital. Malta is the world's tenth-smallest country by area, ninth-most densely populated, and 166th most populated. It consists of a single urban region, because of which it is often described as a city-state. The two official languages are Maltese—recognised as the national language—and English.

The Vietnam War (c. 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of 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 civil and colonial conflicts in Vietnam became internationalized in 1950. After the defeat of the French Union in the First Indochina War, Vietnam's independence was affirmed at the 1954 Geneva Conference, but the country was divided at the 17th parallel: the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, took control of North Vietnam, while Ngo Dinh Diem led South Vietnam, which the US assumed financial and military support for. The North Vietnamese supplied and eventually directed the Viet Cong (VC), a communist front in the south that intensified a guerrilla war from 1957. In 1958, North Vietnam invaded Laos, establishing the Ho Chi Minh trail to supply the VC insurgency. By 1961, North Vietnam was covertly sending soldiers of its People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) to assist the southern insurgents. President John F. Kennedy increased US involvement in the early 1960s, including military advisors and aid to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). In 1963, Diem was killed in a US-backed ARVN military coup, which added to South Vietnam's growing instability. Following the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, the US Congress passed a resolution that gave President Lyndon B. Johnson authority to increase military presence without declaring war. Johnson launched a bombing campaign of the north and deployed combat troops, dramatically increasing deployment to 184,000 by 1966, and 536,000 by 1969. US forces relied on air supremacy and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations in rural areas. Communist forces relied on guerrilla tactics, using the countryside and jungle as concealed base areas. In 1968, the PAVN and Viet Cong launched the Tet Offensive, which was a tactical defeat but contributed to growing American opposition to the war. Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon, began "Vietnamization" from 1969, which saw the conflict fought by an expanded ARVN while US forces withdrew. The 1970 Cambodian coup d'état resulted in a PAVN invasion and US–ARVN counter-invasion, escalating its civil war. With its ranks degraded by widespread drug abuse and plummeting morale, US troops had mostly withdrawn from Vietnam by 1972. However, American forces provided crucial air support to ARVN against North Vietnam's massive Easter Offensive with the Linebacker Operations. Following the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, the last American forces left. The accords were subsequently violated by North Vietnam, and bloody fighting continued until the 1975 Spring Offensive. Weakened by years of corruption and the economic troubles of South Vietnam's Thiệu regime, Saigon fell to the PAVN, marking the war's end. North and South Vietnam were officially reunified in 1976. The war exacted an enormous cost: estimates of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed range from 970,000 to 3 million. Some 275,000–310,000 Cambodians, 20,000–62,000 Laotians, and 58,220 US service members died. The war was also marked by brutal atrocities, including large-scale massacres (such as Huế and Mỹ Lai), terrorism, indiscriminate bombings, rape, torture, and persecution of ethnic minorities. 20% of South Vietnam's jungle was sprayed with toxic herbicides, which led to significant health problems. Political repression and flawed economic policies following the war would precipitate the Vietnamese boat people and the larger Indochina refugee crisis, which saw millions leave Indochina, of which about 250,000 perished at sea. The Khmer Rouge carried out the Cambodian genocide, and the Cambodian–Vietnamese War began in 1978. In response, China invaded Vietnam, with border conflicts lasting until 1991. Within the US, the war gave rise to Vietnam syndrome, an aversion to American overseas military involvement, which, with the Watergate scandal, contributed to the crisis of confidence that affected the United States throughout the 1970s.

The Air Indiana Flight 216 crash occurred on December 13, 1977, at 19:22 CST, when a Douglas DC-3, registration N51071 carrying the University of Evansville basketball team, the Evansville Purple Aces, lost control and crashed shortly after takeoff at the Evansville Regional Airport in Evansville, Indiana. The plane was on its way to Nashville International Airport, taking the team to play the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The National Transportation Safety Board blamed the crash on the pilot's failure to remove gust locks on the right aileron and the rudder before takeoff, as well as an overloaded baggage compartment. The NTSB report said that the plane might have been able to stay airborne had only one of the problems existed. As it was, the extra baggage shifted the plane's center of gravity to the rear, and the locked rudder and aileron made it impossible to control the overweight aircraft. Head coach Bobby Watson was the only coach on board the flight as his assistant coaches were on scouting assignments at the time. Athletic director Jim Byers had planned to board the plane but stayed behind to interview a candidate for the baseball program. Four of the passengers were still breathing when found by rescuers, with three dying on the scene and one dying hours after the accident. The only member of the Purple Aces who did not die in the crash was 18-year-old freshman David Furr; he was out for the season with an ankle injury and thus was not on the plane that day. Two weeks after the crash, Furr and his younger brother Byron were killed in a car accident near Newton, Illinois, leaving the entire 1977 Evansville team dead. After consideration, the rest of the season was cancelled. A memorial has been constructed at the University of Evansville known as the "Weeping Basketball." On stone slabs are engraved the names of the players who were killed, including Furr (the final name on the monument is that of Charles Goad of the Goad Equipment Company, invited on the flight by his friend Bob Hudson). Also engraved is an excerpt from the eulogy delivered by school president Wallace Graves at a memorial service: "Out of the agony of this hour we will rise." A memorial is also at the Ford Center, where the Purple Aces currently play their home games.

Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski (6 July 1923 – 25 May 2014) was a Polish military general, politician and de facto leader of the Polish People's Republic from 1981 until 1989, serving as a military dictator from 13 December 1981 until 22 July 1983. He was the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party between 1981 and 1989, making him the last leader of the Polish People's Republic. Jaruzelski served as Prime Minister from 1981 to 1985, the Chairman of the Council of State from 1985 to 1989 and briefly as President of Poland from 1989 to 1990, when the office of President was restored after 37 years. He was also the last commander-in-chief of the Polish People's Army, which in 1990 became the Polish Armed Forces. Born to Polish nobility in Kurów in eastern (then-central) Poland, Jaruzelski was deported with his family to Siberia by the NKVD after the invasion of Poland. Assigned to forced labour in the Siberian wilderness, he developed photokeratitis, which forced him to wear protective sunglasses for the rest of his life. In 1943, Jaruzelski joined the newly created First Polish Army and fought alongside the Soviets against Nazi Germany in the Eastern Front, most notably in the liberation of Warsaw and in the Battle of Berlin. Following the Polish October and the expatriation of Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky back to the Soviet Union, Jaruzelski became the chief political officer of the Polish People's Army and eventually Polish Minister of Defence in 1968. Jaruzelski became the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party and leader of Poland after the brief one-year term of Stanisław Kania. Kania's predecessor, Edward Gierek, left Poland indebted by accepting loans from foreign creditors and the country's economy, rocked by strikes, was unstable by the time Jaruzelski became head of state. As Poland headed towards insolvency, rationing was enforced due to shortages of basic goods, which only contributed to the tense social and political situation. The declining living and working conditions triggered anger among the masses and strengthened anti-Communist sentiment; the Solidarity union was also gaining support, which worried the Polish Central Committee and the Soviet Union, which viewed Solidarity as a threat to the Warsaw Pact. After his request for a joint Soviet-Polish operation was denied by the Soviets, who were already deeply embroiled in the Soviet-Afghan war, Jaruzelski imposed martial law in Poland on 13 December 1981 to crush the anti-communist opposition. The military junta, curfew and travel restrictions lasted until 22 July 1983. With the Brezhnev doctrine now effectively rendered forceless due to deepening Soviet entanglement in Afghanistan and their own economic crisis, the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR)'s two unsuccessful reform attempts in 1982 and 1987, resulting in the complete collapse of the party's legitimacy and support, as highlighted by the 1988 Polish strikes and a resurgent Solidarity, Jaruzelski began negotiations with the still-banned movement's leaders in late 1988. Acquiescing to their demands, the Polish Round Table Talks were held in early 1989, transforming the system to a multi-party one, with the first semi-free election in the Communist bloc scheduled for 4 June 1989. Solidarity scored an unexpectedly overwhelming victory in the election, starting the chain reaction that resulted in the Fall of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe. Prices were fully freed on 1 August 1989, with Poland becoming only the second Communist country to do so after China in 1985. Facing hyperinflation and increasing strike pressure, Jaruzelski's Prime Minister-designate Czesław Kiszczak failed to clear the vote as PZPR's satellite parties shifted their support to Solidarity's candidate Tadeusz Mazowiecki, who formed the first non-communist government in the Eastern Bloc. Left with only a ceremonial post from July 1989 as President of the Polish People's Republic, he exercised no real power; the PZPR dissolved itself in January 1990 and Jaruzelski retired, with the Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa succeeding him in the 1990 Polish presidential election as the first President elected in a popular vote. Having served as the country's leader during its turbulent final years of Communist rule, Jaruzelski remains a controversial figure in Poland to this day. He was praised for allowing the country's peaceful transition into democracy, but was also fiercely criticised by contemporaries for his imposition of martial law, including his government's violent suppression of protests and imprisonment of thousands of opposition activists without definite charges, among other human rights violations.

The Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, officially the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, is the leader of the Executive Committee (EC) of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the executive body of the PLO, which was established in 1964. The Chairman represents the PLO and the Palestinian people before the international community, including the United Nations. The Chairman is chosen by the members of the PLO EC. Since 29 October 2004, Mahmoud Abbas has been the Chairman of the PLO EC.

The Troubles were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is usually deemed to have ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Although centred in Northern Ireland, violence at times spilled into the Republic of Ireland, England, and mainland Europe. The conflict arose from political and nationalistic disputes with a strong ethnic and sectarian dimension. Unionists and loyalists, mostly Ulster Protestants, wanted Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom, while Irish nationalists and republicans, mostly Irish Catholics, wanted it to join a united Ireland. Despite the division between Protestants and Catholics, it was not a religious war.

Flagship Airlines Flight 3379 was a regularly scheduled passenger flight from Greensboro to Raleigh, North Carolina. On December 13, 1994, the aircraft operating the flight entered a stall on approach to Raleigh-Durham International Airport and crashed 4 miles southwest of the runway threshold, killing both pilots and 13 of the 18 passengers. The remaining occupants suffered injuries. The investigation found that the aircraft had executed a go-around on approach which was mishandled, leading to a midair stall and impact with the ground.

Banat Air Flight 166 was an Antonov An-24 chartered on 13 December 1995 from Romavia by Banat Air.

The 2001 Indian Parliament attack was a terrorist attack on the Parliament of India in New Delhi, India, on 13 December 2001. The attack was carried out by five Jaish-e-Mohammed militants and resulted in the deaths of six Delhi Police personnel, two Parliament Security Service personnel, and a gardener. All five militants were killed by security forces.

The largest enlargement of the European Union (EU), in terms of number of states and population, took place on 1 May 2004.

The Iraq War, also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a protracted armed conflict in Iraq from 2003 to 2011. It began in March 2003 with the invasion by a United States–led coalition, which resulted in the overthrow of the Ba'athist government of Saddam Hussein. During the US occupation of Iraq, the conflict persisted as an insurgency that arose against coalition forces and the newly established Iraqi government. US forces were officially withdrawn in 2011. In 2014, the US became re-engaged in Iraq, leading a new coalition under Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, as the conflict evolved into the ongoing Islamic State insurgency.

The Treaty of Lisbon is a European agreement that amends the two treaties which form the constitutional basis of the European Union (EU). The Treaty of Lisbon, which was signed by all EU member states on 13 December 2007, entered into force on 1 December 2009. It amends the Maastricht Treaty (1992), known in updated form as the Treaty on European Union (2007) or TEU, as well as the Treaty of Rome (1957), known in updated form as the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (2007) or TFEU. It also amends the attached treaty protocols as well as the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM).