Historical Events on February 13
- 1914: The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is established in New York to protect the copyrighted materials of its members.
- 1920: The Negro National League is established.
- 1945: German and Hungarian forces surrender to the Soviets as the Siege of Budapest during World War II comes to an end.
- 1945: Bombers from the Royal Air Force are sent to Dresden, Germany to bomb the city.
- 1955: Israel gets 4 of the 7 Dead Sea Scrolls.
- 1960: The successful test of Gerboise Bleue makes France the 4th Nuclear Super Power.
- 1960: Black college students begin a series of lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville, Tennessee.
- 1961: The Coso artifact is discovered. This artifact was supposedly a half million year old rock that contained a spark plug inside it. It was discovered in Olancha, California by Wallace Lane, Virginia Maxey and Mike Mikesell.
- 1967: Leonardo da Vinci’s Madrid Cordices are discovered by American researchers in the National Library of Spain.
- 1981: More than two miles of streets are destroyed in Louisville, Kentucky by a series of sewer explosions.
- 2004: The discovery of the largest known diamond in the universe – white dwarf star BPM 37093 – was announced by the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
- 2010: In the city of Pune in India, a bomb goes off killing seventeen people and kills another 60 people.
Famous Birthdays on February 13
- American 35th First Lady of the U.S., Bess Truman is born in 1885.
- Welsh author Kate Roberts is born in 1891.
- English-American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate, William Shockley is born in 1910.
- American actress Jean Muir is born in 1911.
- American actress Kim Novak is born in 1933.
- American actor George Sega is born in 1934.
- English actor Oliver Reed is born in 1938.
- English singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel is born in 1950.
- American actress Mena Suvari is born in 1979.