📜 This Day in History

March 13

• 1567A Spanish mercenary army surprised a band of rebels at the Battle of Oosterweel in the Habsburg Netherlands, beginning the Eighty Years' War.
• 1781William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus from the garden of his house in Bath, England, initially considering it to be a comet.
• 1888The eruption of Ritter Island triggered tsunamis that killed up to 3,000 people on nearby islands.
• 1964Kitty Genovese was murdered in New York City, prompting research into the bystander effect due to the false story that neighbors witnessed the killing and did nothing to help her.
• 1996A mass shooting at a primary school occurred in Dunblane, Scotland, killing 16 children and a teacher and prompting tighter gun control in the United Kingdom.
• 2013Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as Pope Francis, making him the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, and the first from the Southern Hemisphere.

Born on this day

• 1615Innocent XII, pope of the Catholic Church (died 1700)
• 1741Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (died 1790)
• 1900Giorgos Seferis, Greek poet and diplomat, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1971)
• 1942Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian poet and author (died 2008)