April 13
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Featured Event
© Marcel Hamonic/Shutterstock.com
America’s first elephant arrives in New York
On this day in 1796, New York City welcomed America’s first elephant: a two-year-old Asian elephant from Bengal. Ten days later she was put on display, with people paying 25 cents to see her. No one really knew how to care for an elephant, which meant she dined on greens and liquor. The elephant—whose name, if she had been given one, was not recorded—went on to tour the East Coast for the next two decades. [Read today’s edition of Today in History > >]
Featured Biography
Featured Biography
© John Parrot—Stocktrek Images/Getty Images
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
Born this day in 1743, Thomas Jefferson was the third U.S. president, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, an influential political philosopher, and the founder and architect of the University of Virginia.
Famous Birthdays
More on April 13
© Fatemeh Bahrami—Anadolu/Getty Images
2024
Iran struck Israel with hundreds of drones and missiles during the Israel-Hamas War, marking the first time the two regional powers came into a direct military confrontation.
© DPA/Press and Information Office of the Federal Government of Germany
2015
Günter Grass—who was the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and was known as the literary spokesman for Germans who grew up in the Nazi era and survived World War II—died at the age of 87. [Take our literature quiz.]
© Victor5490/Dreamstime.com
2002
The military coup that a day before had installed businessman Pedro Carmona Estanga as interim president of Venezuela collapsed this day, and the following morning Hugo Chávez was restored to the presidency. [Sort fact from fiction in our South America quiz.]
© Keiichi Sato
1997
Tiger Woods won the Masters Tournament, becoming the first golfer of African American descent and the youngest player to win the event. [Test your knowledge of golf.]
Copyright © 1963 United Artists Corporation. All rights reserved.
1964
For his performance in Lilies of the Field (1963), Sidney Poitier became the first African American to win the Academy Award for best actor. [How much do you know about the Academy Awards?]
Andreas Rentz /Getty Images
1963
Garry Kasparov, who in 1985 became the youngest world chess champion, was born in Azerbaijan. [Sort fact from fiction in our chess quiz.]
© SeanPavonePhoto/stock.adobe.com
1943
The Thomas Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in East Potomac Park on the south bank of the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. [How much do you know about iconic monuments?]
Image: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1941
Japan concluded a neutrality pact with the Soviet Union in World War II. [Test your knowledge of World War II.]
Bernard Gotfryd Photograph Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-ppmsca-12450)
1909
Short-story writer and novelist Eudora Welty, whose work depicts the regional manners of people inhabiting a small Mississippi town that resembles her birthplace, was born in Jackson, Mississippi. [Take our quiz about authors of classic literature.]
© Gisèle Freund
1906
Nobel Prize-winning playwright and critic Samuel Beckett maintained he was born on this day. (His birth certificate says he was born in a suburb of Dublin on May 13, 1906.) [Take our quiz about English and Irish playwrights.]
H. Roger-Viollet
1895
Alfred Dreyfus was imprisoned on Devils Island, off French Guiana, after he was convicted of treason in a military trial fueled by the virulently antisemitic faction of the French press. Dreyfus maintained his innocence, and he was eventually cleared of all charges.
Physicistjedi
1870
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in New York City, and it became one of the leading art museums in the world. [What are 10 paintings you should see at the Met?]
Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London
1742
George Frideric Handel’s Messiah premiered, in Dublin. It became the most frequently performed oratorio, typically played at Christmastime. [Listen to “Hallelujah Chorus,” the final chorus from part two of Handel’s Messiah.]
© Photos.com/Getty Images
1640
Charles I, king of Great Britain and Ireland, convened the Short Parliament, the first to be summoned in 11 years. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about famous Englishmen.]
Giraudon/Art Resource, New York
1598
King Henry IV of France promulgated the Edict of Nantes in Brittany, granting a large measure of religious liberty to his Protestant subjects, the Huguenots. [Test your knowledge of French history.]