February 13th
On this day in the year 1258 of the common era (CE) the city of Baghdad, with a population of one million people, falls to the Mongols and the Abbasid Caliphate is destroyed, tens of thousands of people are slaughtered, historians mark this as the end of the Islamic Golden-Age; seven hundreds and sixty years later the an Israeli police report recommends that its governing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu be prosecuted on bribery, fraud and breach-of-trust charges. Three years after that in Abydos, Egypt archaeologists announce the discovery of the oldest known beer factory from the early Dynastic period, between 3150 before the common era, and 2613 BCE.
On this day in the year 1633 CE, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for trial before the Inquisition for drawing the scientific conclusion that the Earth is a sphere orbiting a spherical Sun; one hundred and forty-four years later the Marquis de Sade is arrested without charge and imprisoned in the fortress at Vincennes, France. One hundred and nine years later, in 1886 CE painter Thomas Eakins resigns from Philadelphia Academy of Art after controversial use of male-nude-models in a coed art class; thirty-one years later, the Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari is arrested in Paris on suspicion that she is a German spy.
On this day in 1689 CE the English Parliament adopts the Bill of Rights, establishing the right of parliament as the representatives of the people to place limits on the Crown; four years later the College of William & Mary opens in Williamsburg, Virginia. Two hundred and fourteen years after that English suffragettes storm the parliament and sixty women are arrested.
In 1826 CE the American Temperance Society is formed in Boston, Massachusettes; fifty-five years after that, the feminist newspaper La Citoyenne is first published in Paris, France by activist Hubertine Auclert.
In 1861 CE the first military action to result in the bequeathment of the nation’s highest commendation for bravery and valor, the Medal of Honor, takes place as Bernard J.D. Irwin volunteers to lead a rescue mission, freeing sixty soldiers from the Chiricahua at Apache Pass, Arizona; five years later Jesse James robs his first bank, stealing $15,000 from the Clay County Savings Association in Liberty, Missouri.
In 1895 CE the moving picture projector is patented; one hundred and thirty years later a humpback whale is filmed briefly swallowing a man on a kayak off the coast of Chilean Patagonia and then releasing him unharmed.
In 1920 CE the League of Nations recognizes the perpetual neutrality of Switzerland, allowing Switzerland to rejoin; seventy years later the United States, the United Kingdom and France grant Germany permission to reunify the country that had been divided into east and west, and governed separately since the end of World War II. Eleven years after that, Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd makes an historic apology to indigenous Australians, lifting-up the “stolen generations” who suffered forced child removal and assimilation; seventeen years later, at the direction of the Trump administration the United States National Park Service quietly removes all references to transgender and queer people from Stonewall National Monument website; a monument in New York, New York which commemorates a series of riots that took place in New York city after the police brutally beating gay man for being gay.
In 1935 CE Bruno Hauptmann is found guilty of kidnap and murder the infant child of aviator and nazi sympathizer, Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann proclaimed his innocence to the end of his life; two years later the Prince Valiant comic strip appears in syndication and is acclaimed for its historical detail.
In 1960 CE France becomes the fourth nuclear-nation, detonating a 70-kiloton "Gerboise Bleue" atomic bomb in the Algerian Sahara Desert; six years later the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics performs nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan
In 1974 CE, Nobel Laureate, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian novelist and historian is deported from the Soviet Union to Frankfurt, West Germany and stripped of his Soviet citizenship; twenty-six years later the last original Peanuts comic-strip appears in newspapers…one day after its creator Charles M. Schulz dies.
In 1985 CE the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 1297.92 (a record high) after topping 1300 earlier in the trading day; on this day in 2026 the DOW closed at 49,500.93.
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