1781: The planet Uranus discovered. English astronomer William Herschel observed this day in 1781 the seventh planet from the Sun, Uranus—first described by him as “a curious either nebulous star or perhaps a comet” and named for the father of the god Saturn. It is the third largest planet by radius in the solar system.
1868: American Senate begins US President Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial.
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1903: The last official of the Sokoto Caliphate, one of Africa’s largest states 50 years before and which covers modern-day Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger, surrenders to British colonial authorities.
1925: The Tennessee legislature passed a bill that banned the teaching of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in the state’s public schools; in a highly publicized trial, high-school teacher John T. Scopes was later convicted of breaking the law.
1943: German troops liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Kraków. Thousands of men, women, and children were murdered by the nazis or deported to extermination camps. The horrific event is portrayed in the film, Schindler’s List.
1968: As part of the Tet Offensive, a squad of Viet Cong guerillas attacked the U.S. embassy in Saigon. The soldiers seized the embassy and held it for six hours until an assault force of U.S. paratroopers landed by helicopter on the building’s roof and routed the Viet Cong.
1980: John Wayne Gacy was an American serial killer and sex offender who raped, tortured, and murdered at least 33 young men and boys in Norwood Park Township, near Chicago, Illinois. He became known as the Killer Clown due to his public performances as a clown before the discovery of his crimes
Gacy was given a lethal injection on May 10, 1994.
1991: Exxon pays $1 billion in fines and costs for the clean-up of the Alaskan oil spill.
1995: Retired General Olusegun Obasanjo, who headed a military regime between 1976 and 1979, is arrested on suspicion of being involved in a plot to overthrow Abacha.
Four days earlier, on 9 March, his former second-in-command, retired General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, was arrested for the same reason. According to Amnesty International, they were incriminated by statements made by Colonel Bello-Fadile, who later retracted them, maintaining they had been obtained under duress.
1996: A gunman invaded a primary school in the small Scottish town of Dunblane and shot to death 16 young children and their teacher before turning a gun on himself; the school shooting resulted in various changes to British gun laws.
2015: Former Granada TV weather presenter Fred Talbot was jailed for five years for indecent assault in connection with two schoolboys during his former career as a biology teacher in the 1970s. Talbot (65) was known to millions for his forecasts on a floating weather map for ITV’s This Morning show.
2019: US grounds all Boeing 737 Max aircraft after bans by other countries following the plane type’s second crash in Ethiopia.
2013: Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope, choosing the name Francis. he was the first pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium.
2021: American boxer Marvin Hagler, a durable middleweight champion who was one of the greatest boxers of the 1970s and ’80s, died at age 66.
Births on This Day, March 13
Adam Clayton, 64 years
Adam Clayton is an English-born Irish musician best known as the bass guitarist of the rock band U2. Having won 22 Grammy Awards, Clayton’s place in rock history was solidified in 2005 by his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
1985 Matt Jackson, 39 years
Matt Jackson of the wrestling tag team, the Young Bucks, remembers growing up being the smallest kid in class. It bothered him at times, but he quickly learned that height did not matter. What mattered was, how hard he was willing to work to achieve his dreams.
Yemi Alade, 35 years
Yemi Eberechi Alade is a Nigerian singer, songwriter, actress, and activist. Her music is a mixture of Afropop, highlife, dancehall, pop, and R&B, and has been of influence in several countries across Africa. She sings in English, Igbo, Pidgin, Yoruba, French, Swahili, and Portuguese. She was the first African female artist to reach one million subscribers on YouTube in July 2019.
Kofi Awoonor (13 March 1935 – 21 September 2013)
Ghanaian poet and author who kept alive the storytelling traditions of the Ewe people in tales set in modern times in Wheta, Gold Coast. He started writing under the name George Awoonor-Williams and was also published as Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor. He was teaching Literature at the University of Ghana when on a trip to Nairobi, Kenya he was one of the victims killed in 2013 during a terror attack on the Westgate Mall when he was 78 years old.
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