Today is Friday, September 13, the 256th day of 2013. There are 109 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1536 - Holy Roman Emperor Charles V abandons siege of Marseilles after disastrous campaign and sails from Genoa to Barcelona.
1586 - Anthony Babington and fellow conspirators go on trial for attempting to seize throne of England for Mary Queen of Scots by plotting to murder Queen Elizabeth I.
1759 - After a two-month siege of Quebec, British forces scale the Heights of Abraham to engage and defeat the French.
1788 - Denmark invades Sweden; the first U.S. national election is authorized.
1882 - British defeat Egyptians at Tel el-Kebir, Lower Egypt, and proceed to occupy Egypt and the Sudan.
1943 - Chiang Kai-shek becomes president of China.
1948 - Republican Margaret Chase Smith of Maine is elected to the U.S. Senate, becoming the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress.
1964 - Egypt and Saudi Arabia announce agreement of peaceful settlement of two-year-old Yemeni civil war.
1970 - Israel arrests 450 Arabs in occupied Jordan and says it will exchange them for hostages held by guerrillas.
1971 - A four-day inmates' rebellion at the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York ends as police and guards storm the prison; the ordeal and final assault kills 43 people.
1982 - At least 700 persons are killed and 17 million left homeless by floods across the north and east of India during the monsoon season since June.
1986 - Iraqi warplanes bomb five airfields in Iran as demonstrators seek revenge for Iran's missile attack on Baghdad.
1991 - The U.S. and the Soviet Union agree to discontinue their military aid to government and rebel forces in Afghanistan after more than a year of U.S.-Soviet negotiations aimed at bringing a settlement in the 12-year-old Afghan civil war.
1993 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat shake hands on the lawn of the White House at the signing of a peace accord providing for mutual recognition and Palestinian control over Gaza and the West Bank.
1994 - At U.N. International Conference on Population and Development, 180 nations adopt a 20-year blueprint to slow world population growth.
1995 - A military transport aircraft crashes into the sea off the coast of western Sri Lanka, killing all 75 people on board.
1998 - The Yugoslav republic of Montenegro deports thousands of Kosovo refugees to Albania.
1999 - The fourth major blast in Russia in two weeks destroys an apartment building in Moscow and kills 118 people.
2001 - An international arrest warrant is issued for Peru's exiled former President Alberto Fujimori for his alleged role in massacres by the Grupo Colina paramilitary death squad in the early 1990s.
2002 - Two U.S. pilots are charged with involuntary manslaughter and assault for mistakenly bombing Canadian forces near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan in April.
2004 - North Korea says a huge cloud caused by an explosion was the planned demolition of a mountain for a hydroelectric project and invites a British diplomat to visit the site.
2005 - U.S. President George W. Bush says that "I take responsibility" for failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina and says the disaster raised broader questions about the government's ability to respond to natural disasters as well as terror attacks.
2006 - A gunman opens fire at a Montreal college and wounds at least 20 people — six critically — before shooting himself dead.
2007 - Three powerful earthquakes jolt Indonesia in less than 24 hours, sending a 10-foot tsunami crashing to shore, damaging hundreds of houses and terrifying residents. At least 10 people are killed.
2008 — Russian soldiers and armored vehicles pull back from positions deep in western Georgia, meeting a closely watched withdrawal deadline a month after the war between the former Soviet republics.
2009 - President Hugo Chavez says Russia has opened a $2.2 billion line of credit for Venezuela to purchase weapons including armored vehicles and surface-to-air missiles.
2010 - Cuba announces it will cast off at least half a million state workers by early next year and reduce restrictions on private enterprise to help them find new jobs — the most dramatic step yet in President Raul Castro's push to radically remake employment on the communist-run island.
2011 - German Chancellor Angela Merkel seeks to calm market fears that Greece is heading for a chaotic default as Europe struggles to contain a crippling financial crisis.
2012 — A long-simmering volcano explodes in a series of powerful eruptions outside one of Guatemala's most famous tourist attractions, hurling thick clouds of ash nearly two miles (three kilometers) high, spewing rivers of lava down its flanks and prompting evacuation orders for more than 33,000 people from surrounding communities.
Today's Birthdays:
Walter Reed, U.S. bacteriologist (1851-1901); Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian-born composer (1874-1951); Claudette Colbert, U.S. actress (1903-1996); Roald Dahl, British writer (1916-1990); Oscar Arias Sanchez, president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1941--); Jacqueline Bisset, British actress (1944--); Michael Johnson, U.S. athlete (1967--).
Thought for Today:
We do not attach ourselves lastingly to anything that has not cost us care, labor or longing — Honore de Balzac, French dramatist (1799-1850).
News Topics: General news, War and unrest, Government and politics, Accidents and disasters, CrimePeople, Places and Companies: Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat, Alberto Fujimori, George W. Bush, Hugo Chavez, Raul Castro, Angela Merkel, Claudette Colbert, Roald Dahl, Oscar Arias, Jacqueline Bisset, Michael Johnson, Honore de Balzac, Egypt, Russia, United States, Middle East, Afghanistan, North Africa, Africa, Eastern Europe, Europe, North America, Central Asia, Asia
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