📜 This Day in History

April 13

• 1742The first performance of the oratorio Messiah by George Frideric Handel took place in Dublin.
• 1942Austrian soldier Anton Schmid was executed for rescuing Jews from the Ponary massacre in Vilnius.
• 1953Ian Fleming's novel Casino Royale was published as the first work to feature the British spy character James Bond.
• 1958In the midst of the Cold War, American pianist Van Cliburn won the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
• 1997In golf, 21-year-old Tiger Woods became the youngest player to win the Masters Tournament, breaking the record for the lowest four-round score.
• 2017War in Afghanistan: In an airstrike in Nangarhar Province, the U.S. military dropped the most powerful conventional bomb used in combat.

Born on this day

• 1743Thomas Jefferson, American lawyer and politician, 3rd President of the United States (died 1826)
• 1906Samuel Beckett, Irish novelist, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1989)
• 1939Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2013)
• 1963Garry Kasparov, Russian chess player and author