13 March: On this day in history
What events happened on 13 March in history? We round up the events, births and deaths…
13 March 1569
A French Catholic army defeats the Huguenots at the Battle of Jarnac in western France. The Huguenot commander, Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, is shot after surrendering.
13 March 1781
Using a telescope of his own design, astronomer William Herschel observed the planet later named Uranus from the back garden of his house in New King Street, Bath. He originally thought it was a comet.
13 March 1842
British soldier and inventor Henry Shrapnel died in Southampton. In 1784 he had started to develop a shot-filled cannonball, which exploded in mid-air. This later became known as 'shrapnel'.
13 March 1863
An explosion at the Confederate Ordinance Laboratory on Brown’s Island on the James river, Richmond, killed about 50 people, most of them young women.
13 March 1877
Chester Greenwood from Maine is granted a patent to make earmuffs.
13 March 1938
Twenty-one communist leaders including former Comintern head Nikolai Bukharin are found guilty in a Moscow show trial of conspiring against Stalin. The majority will be executed two days later.
13 March 1940
The Russo-Finnish War was brought to an end by the Moscow Peace Treaty. Finland was forced to give up ten per cent of its territory including Viipuri, its second-largest city.
Get exclusive access to Ruth Goodman’s six-week Academy course on Victorian Life, featuring two live Q&As + a book of your choice when you subscribe to BBC History Magazine
