Thursday, March 13, 2008

Thursday Thirteen and List #13: 13 March in History



Thirteen things that occurred on 13 March

1. William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781

2. In 1954, Viet Minh forces under General Vo Nguyen Giap started the battle against French forces in Dien Bien Phu. While the French felt confident of their military superiority, the battle lasted until 7 May with the French defeat. The

3. In 1969, the Apollo 9 mission returned to Earth, after testing the lunar module.

4. In 1911, Mongolia declares independence.

5. The Phoenix lights were seen in the skies in Arizona in 1997. I lived there in 1992 - wished I had stayed another five years so I could have seen them!

6. In 1845, Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto premiers in Leipzig. I can't imagine how performances in these old theaters must have sounded.

7. In 1884, the Siege of Khartoum started, finally ending in January 1885. A British colony, the siege was led by the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad against the British troops led by British General Charles George Gordon.

8. In France, 1900 brought a law limiting the work day of women and children to eleven hours/ day!

9. Tennessee passed a law in 1925 prohibiting the teaching of evolution, which led to the famous Scopes Trial.

10. In 1930, the discovery of another distant planet is announced when Percival Lowell wired his news about the new planet Pluto. However, in 2006, Pluto lost its planetary status.

11. In 1989, a geomagnetic storm causes the collapse of the power grid, leaving 6 million people without electricity in Canada.

12. In 1991, the US Justice Department rules that Exxon was responsible for cleaning up the oil spill caused by the running aground of the Exxon Valdez. Although Exxon has spent 2 billion in clean-up and additional 1 billion USD for setting cases, major cases against Exxon are still going through appeals.

13. In 2003, the journal Nature reported on the discovery of 350,000 year old footprints in Italy!

And how will we remember 13 March 2008? Resignation of the governor of NY as well as a former US presidential candidate from her fund-raising position with the campaign of another woman seeking a high office.

My favorite news story today is about the Cassini space craft flying through the plume of vapor rising from Saturn's moon, Enceladus.

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4 comments:

Rebecca said...

Very informative - Happy TT :-)

anthonynorth said...

#7 resulted in a war that really began the careers of two famous Brits. Lord Kitchener, famous during WWI, and a young commissioned war reporter called Churchill, or something like that :-)

Mrs. Brownstone @ XBOX Wife said...

Loved this - I am a history buff, too. Though I'm not really great at being able to list it out, I love the History channel and historical novels!

Anonymous said...

Very interesting. And I don't care what anybody says: Pluto is a planet!