This Year in History:
2013
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On this day in 2013, Pauline Phillips, who for more than 40 years wrote the “Dear Abby” newspaper advice column, dies at age 94 in Minneapolis after battling Alzheimer’s disease.…
In a crime that scandalized Russia and made headlines around the world, Sergei Filin, the artistic director at the famed Bolshoi Ballet, is attacked with acid outside his home in…
In February of 2013, Netflix introduced “House of Cards,” the first major TV show that ran exclusively on a streaming service. It was a Netflix innovation that would alter the…
On February 28, 2013, less than three weeks after making the unexpected announcement that he would step down, 85‑year‑old Pope Benedict XVI officially resigns. Citing advanced age as the reason…
On April 4, 2013, one of America’s best‑known and most influential movie critics, Roger Ebert, who reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun‑Times for 46 years and on TV for 31 years,…
Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom, dies in London at age 87 from a stroke on April 8, 2013. Serving from 1979 to 1990, Thatcher…
On April 15, 2013, two bombs go off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three spectators and wounding more than 260 other people in attendance. Four days…
On this day in 2013, legendary country singer and songwriter George Jones, whose numerous hit songs include “White Lightning,” “Walk Through This World With Me” and “He Stopped Loving Her…
On May 6, 2013, three women are rescued from a Cleveland, Ohio, house where they had been imprisoned for many years by their abductor, 52‑year‑old Ariel Castro, an unemployed bus…
On June 5, 2013, Americans learned that their government was spying broadly on its own people. That’s when The Guardian, and later The Washington Post, published the first of a…
On this day in 2013, Esther Williams, a champion teenage swimmer who went on to star in a series of hugely popular aquatic‑themed movie‑musicals in the 1940s and 1950s, dies…
On June 19, 2013, James Gandolfini, the actor best known for his role as New Jersey crime boss Tony Soprano on the TV series “The Sopranos,” which debuted in 1999…
On June 23, 2013, 34‑year‑old aerialist Nik Wallenda becomes the first person to walk a high wire across the Little Colorado River Gorge near Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.…
On this day in 2013, 19 firefighters perish while battling a wildfire near Yarnell, Arizona. All were members of the Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew, an elite group of wildland…
Outraged and saddened after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the Florida man who killed a Black teenager in 2012, Oakland, California resident Alicia Garza posts a message on Facebook on July…
Weighing in at a healthy 8 pounds, 6 ounces, the first child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (more informally known as Prince William and Kate Middleton), is born…
On this day in 2013, the prolific, best‑selling author Elmore Leonard, whose crime novels include “Get Shorty,” “Rum Punch” and “Out of Sight,” dies at age 87 in Bloomfield Village,…
On September 2, 2013, 64‑year‑old Diana Nyad becomes the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the use of a shark cage for protection. Nyad completed the 110‑mile…
On September 16, 2013, a 34‑year‑old man goes on a rampage at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., killing 12 people and wounding several others over the course of an…
On this day in 2013, espionage and military thriller author Tom Clancy, whose books include “The Hunt for Red October” and “Patriot Games,” dies in Baltimore at age 66 following…
