February 13

• 1130 - Innocent II is voted Pope.
• 1542 - Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, is executed for adultery.
• 1633 - Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.
• 1668 - Spain recognizes Portugal as an independent nation.
• 1689 - William and Mary are proclaimed co-rulers of England.
• 1692 - Massacre of Glencoe occurs.
• 1866 - Jesse James robs his first bank.
• 1880 - Thomas Edison becomes the first person to observe the Edison Effect.
• 1894 - Auguste and Louis Lumière patent the Cinematographe, a combination movie camera and projector.
• 1914 - Copyright: In New York City the ASCAP (for American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) is established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members.
• 1920 - The Negro National League is formed.
• 1924 - King Tut's tomb is opened.
• 1933 - Giuseppe Zangara kills Chicago mayor Anton Cermak during an assassination attempt on Franklin Roosevelt in Miami, Florida.
• 1935 - A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Richard Hauptmann guilty of the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh's baby boy.
• 1945 - World War II: Soviet Union forces capture Budapest, Hungary from the Nazis.
• 1945 - World War II: The British Air Force bombs Dresden, Germany (see Bombing of Dresden in World War II)
• 1955 - Israel obtains 4 of the 7 Dead Sea scrolls.
• 1960 - Nuclear testing: France tests its first atomic bomb.
• 1971 - Vietnam War: Backed by American air and artillery support, South Vietnamese troops invade Laos.
• 1984 - Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
• 1988 - 1988 Winter Olympic Games open in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
• 1990 - German reunification: An agreement is reached for a two-stage plan to reunite Germany.
• 1991 - Gulf War: Two laser-guided "smart bombs" destroy an underground bunker in Baghdad killing hundreds of Iraqis. Iraqi officials claim that the bunker was a bomb shelter but United States military intelligence identified it as a military facility.
• 1997 - Tune-up and repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope is started by astronauts from the Space Shuttle Discovery.
• 2000 - The last original "Peanuts" comic strip appears in newspapers a day after Charles M. Schulz died.
• 2001 - An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter Scale hits El Salvador, killing at least 400.
• 2002 - Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom gives former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani an honorary knighthood.
• 2004 - Travis Metcalfe from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovers the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093, weighing an estimated 1034 carats. [1]

• 1599 - Pope Alexander VII (d. 1667)
• 1682 - Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, painter (d. 1754)
• 1873 - Feodor Chaliapin, operatic bass (d. 1938)
• 1885 - Bess Truman, First Lady, wife of President Harry S. Truman (d. 1982)
• 1892 - Grant Wood, painter (d. 1942)
• 1903 - Georges Simenon, thriller writer (d. 1989)
• 1910 - William Bradford Shockley, physicist, social commentator (d. 1989)
• 1913 - George Barker, British poet (d. 1991)
• 1919 - Tennessee Ernie Ford, musician (d. 1991)
• 1923 - Chuck Yeager, pilot of first supersonic flight
• 1930 - Ernst Fuchs, painter and graphic artist
• 1933 - Kim Novak, actress
• 1934 - George Segal, actor
• 1938 - Oliver Reed, actor (d. 1999)
• 1941 - Sigmar Polke, painter
• 1942 - Peter Tork, musician and actor (The Monkees)
• 1944 - Jerry Springer, television host
• 1947 - Mike Krzyzewski, Duke University basketball coach, Basketball Hall of Famer
• 1950 - Peter Gabriel, musician
• 1958 - Pernilla August, actress
• 1961 - Henry Rollins, musician
• 1974 - Robbie Williams, Pop singer
• 1977 - Randy Moss, NFL star
• 1983 - Amy Mizzi, actress

• 1130 - Pope Honorius II
• 1542 - Catherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII of England (executed) (b. 1525)
• 1660 - King Charles X of Sweden (b. 1622)
• 1728 - Cotton Mather, Puritan minister, author (b. 1663)
• 1787 - Ruđer Bošković, scientist and diplomat (b. 1711)
• 1883 - Richard Wagner, German composer (b. 1813)
• 1950 - Rafael Sabatini, author (b. 1875)
• 1951 - Lloyd C. Douglas, author (b. 1877)
• 1952 - Josephine Tey, mystery novel author (b. 1896)
• 1976 - Lily Pons, opera singer
• 1980 - David Janssen, actor (b. 1930)
• 2002 - Waylon Jennings, country musician (b. 1937)
• 2003 - Walt Rostow, US government official

• 1991, 2002, 2013 Ash Wednesday