This Year in History:
1913
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen, mastermind of an aggressive German military strategy that will soon be used, in modified form, at the start of the Great War, dies on…
Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th president of the United States, is born on January 9, 1913 in California. The son of Quaker parents, Nixon grew up in the southern California city of…
On February 1, 1913, 25‑year‑old multi‑sport star Jim Thorpe—who won two gold medals at the 1912 Olympics—signs a Major League Baseball contract with the New York Giants. The signing comes on…
On February 2, 1913, New York City’s Grand Central Terminal opens for the first time. The transportation hub as we know it today began construction in 1903, but before that…
Rosa Louise McCauley—known to history by her married name, Rosa Parks—is born in Tuskegee, Alabama on February 4, 1913. A lifelong civil rights activist, Parks’ name has become synonymous with…
Thirteen‑year‑old Mary Phagan is found sexually molested and murdered in the basement of the Atlanta, Georgia, pencil factory where she worked. Her murder later led to one of the most…
On the night of Thursday, May 29, 1913, the pioneering Russian ballet corps Ballet Russes performs Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), choreographed by the…
On May 30, 1913, a peace treaty is signed ending the First Balkan War, in which the newly aligned Slavic nations of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece had driven Turkish…
On June 7, 1913, Hudson Stuck, an Alaskan missionary, leads the first successful ascent of Denali (formerly known as Mt. McKinley), the highest point on the North American continent at…
Two farmers walking near a quarry outside of Edinburgh, Scotland, find two small, dead bodies floating in the water, tied together. Although the bodies were so waterlogged that authorities could…
On July 14, 1913, Gerald R. Ford is born Leslie Lynch King, Jr. in Omaha, Nebraska. His biological father left the family when Ford was three years old. His mother’s…
On September 29, 1913, Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the engine that bears his name, disappears from the steamship Dresden while traveling from Antwerp, Belgium to Harwich, England. On October 10,…
For the first time, Henry Ford’s entire Highland Park, Michigan automobile factory is run on a continuously moving assembly line when the chassis–the automobile’s frame–is assembled using the revolutionary industrial…
On December 1, 1913, Henry Ford installs the first moving assembly line for the mass production of an entire automobile. His innovation reduced the time it took to build a…
Two years after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece The Mona Lisa is recovered inside Italian waiter Vincenzo Peruggia’s hotel room in Florence.…
