July 13
1099 - The Crusaders launched their final assault on Muslims in Jerusalem.
1534 - The Ottoman armies captured Tabriz in northwestern Persia.
1558 - Led by the court of Egmont, the Spanish army defeated the French at Gravelines, France.
1585 - A group of 108 English colonists, led by Sir Richard Grenville, reached Roanoke Island, NC.
1643 - In England, the Roundheads, led by Sir William Waller, were defeated by royalist troops under Lord Wilmot in the Battle of Roundway Down.
1754 - At the beginning of the French and Indian War, George Washington surrendered the small, circular Fort Necessity in southwestern Pennsylvania to the French.
1787 - The U.S. Congress, under the Articles of Confederation, enacted the Northwest Ordinance, which established the rules for governing the Northwest Territory, for admitting new states to the Union and limiting the expansion of slavery.
1793 - French revolutionary writer Jean Paul Marat was stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday. She was executed four days later.
1812 - The first pawnbroking ordinance was passed in New York City.
1832 - Henry Schoolcraft discovered the source of the Mississippi River in Minnesota.
1835 - John Ruggles received patent #1 from the U.S. Patent Office for a traction wheel used in locomotive steam engines. All 9,957 previous patents were not numbered.
1863 - Opponents of the Civil War draft began three days of rioting in New York City, which resulted in more than 1,000 casualties.
1875 - David Brown patented the first cash-carrier system.
1878 - The Congress of Berlin divided the Balkans among European powers.
1896 - Philadelphia’s Ed Delahanty became the second major league player to hit four home runs in a single game.
1931 - A major German financial institution, Danabank, failed. This led to the closing of all banks in Germany until August 5.
1941 - Britain and the Soviet Union signed a mutual aid pact, that provided the means for Britain to send war material to the Soviet Union.
1954 - In Geneva, the United States, Great Britain and France reached an accord on Indochina which divided Vietnam into two countries, North and South, along the 17th parallel.
1967 - Race-related rioting broke out in Newark, NJ. At the end of four days of violence 27 people had been killed.
1971 - The Army of Morocco executed ten leaders accused of leading a revolt.
1972 - Carroll Rosenbloom (owner of the Baltimore Colts) and Robert Irsay (owner of the Los Angeles Rams) traded teams.
1973 - David Bedford set a new world record in the 10,000-meter race in London. His time was 27 minutes, 31 seconds.
1978 - Lee Iacocca was fired as president of Ford Motor Co. by chairman Henry Ford II.
1979 - A 45-hour siege began at the Egyptian Embassy in Ankara, Turkey. Four Palestinian guerrillas killed two security men and seized 20 hostages.
1982 - The All-Star Game was played outside the United States for the first time. They played in Montreal, Canada.
1984 - In Arkansas, Terry Wallis was injured in a car accident and was left comatose. He came out of the coma in June of 2003.
1994 - Jeff Gillooly, Tonya Harding's ex-husband, was sentenced in Portland, OR, to two years in prison for his role in the attack on Nancy Kerrigan.
1998 - "Image of an Assassination" went on sale. The video documentary is of Abraham Zapruder's home video of U.S. President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas.
1998 - Four young cousins in Gallup, NM, died after becoming trapped in a car trunk.
1998 - RealNetworks Inc. rolled out a test version of RealSystem G2. G2 is a streaming video and audio delivery system.
2000 - The United States and Vietnam singed a major trade agreement. The pact still needed to be approved by the U.S. Congress.
2000 - Sprint Corp. and WorldCom canceled their planned merger due to opposition by regulators in the United States and Europe.
