This Year in History:
1913
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen, mastermind of an aggressive German military strategy that will soon be used, in modified form, at the start of the Great War, dies on this day in 1913 in Berlin. The son of a Prussian general, Schlieffen entered the army in 1854 and participated in both the Seven Weeks’ […]
Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th president of the United States, is born on January 9, 1913 in California. The son of Quaker parents, Nixon grew up in the southern California city of Yorba Linda. Early on he proved himself to be a stellar student, attending Whittier College and graduating from Duke University Law School with honors. Nixon […]
On February 1, 1913, 25-year-old multi-sport star Jim Thorpe—who won two gold medals at the 1912 Olympics—signs a Major League Baseball contract with the New York Giants. The signing comes on the same day Thorpe returns his Olympic medals to Sweden for a violation of amateur rules. Years earlier, he was paid to play minor league […]
On February 2, 1913, New York City’s Grand Central Terminal opens for the first time. The transportation hub as we know it today began construction in 1903, but before that 89 E 42nd was home to an older steam train station built in 1879. Even though the station had been updated to deal with an […]
Rosa Louise McCauley—known to history by her married name, Rosa Parks—is born in Tuskegee, Alabama on February 4, 1913. A lifelong civil rights activist, Parks’ name has become synonymous with her refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus in 1955, a defining moment of the civil rights movement. […]
Thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan is found sexually molested and murdered in the basement of the Atlanta, Georgia, pencil factory where she worked. Her murder later led to one of the most disgraceful episodes of bigotry, injustice and mob violence in American history: the lynching of Leo Frank. Next to Phagan’s body were two small notes that […]
On the night of Thursday, May 29, 1913, the pioneering Russian ballet corps Ballet Russes performs Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), choreographed by the famous dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, at the Theatre de Champs-Elysees in Paris. Now considered a triumph of early modernist dance, the performance elicited a powerful negative […]
On May 30, 1913, a peace treaty is signed ending the First Balkan War, in which the newly aligned Slavic nations of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece had driven Turkish forces out of Macedonia, a territory of the Ottoman Empire located in the tumultuous Balkans region of southeastern Europe. After rebellion in Macedonia—led by a […]
On June 7, 1913, Hudson Stuck, an Alaskan missionary, leads the first successful ascent of Denali (formerly known as Mt. McKinley), the highest point on the North American continent at 20,320 feet. Stuck, an accomplished amateur mountaineer, was born in London in 1863. After moving to the United States, in 1905 he became archdeacon of […]
On July 14, 1913, Gerald R. Ford is born Leslie Lynch King, Jr. in Omaha, Nebraska. His biological father left the family when Ford was three years old. His mother’s second husband, Gerald Ford, adopted the young boy and gave him his name. The young Ford went on to become the first vice president to […]
On September 29, 1913, Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the engine that bears his name, disappears from the steamship Dresden while traveling from Antwerp, Belgium to Harwich, England. On October 10, a Belgian sailor aboard a North Sea steamer spotted a body floating in the water; upon further investigation, it turned out that the body was […]
For the first time, Henry Ford’s entire Highland Park, Michigan automobile factory is run on a continuously moving assembly line when the chassis—the automobile’s frame—is assembled using the revolutionary industrial technique. A motor and rope pulled the chassis past workers and parts on the factory floor, cutting the man-hours required to complete one “Model T.” […]
On December 1, 1913, Henry Ford installs the first moving assembly line for the mass production of an entire automobile. His innovation reduced the time it took to build a car from more than 12 hours to one hour and 33 minutes. Ford’s Model T, introduced in 1908, was simple, sturdy and relatively inexpensive–but not […]
Two years after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece The Mona Lisa is recovered inside Italian waiter Vincenzo Peruggia’s hotel room in Florence. Peruggia had previously worked at the Louvre and had participated in the heist with a group of accomplices dressed as Louvre janitors on the morning […]
