March 13 History You Never Knew

1639 Cambridge College, Massachusetts, renamed Harvard for clergyman John Harvard
1677 Massachusetts gains title to Maine for $6,000
1778 France informs Great Britain of their Treaty of Alliance with the US; Great Britain responds with a declaration of war against France four days later
1781 William Herschel sees what he thinks is a "comet" but is actually the discovery of the planet Uranus
1790 John Martin, 1st American-born actor, performs in Philadelphia
1852 Uncle Sam cartoon figure made its debut in the New York Lantern weekly
1865 Confederate President Jefferson Davis signs bill authorizing use of slaves as soldiers during last weeks of the US Civil War
1868 Senate begins US President Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial
1869 Arkansas legislature passes anti-Ku Klux Klan law
1877 American Chester Greenwood patents earmuffs after inventing them at age 15
1900 In France the length of the working day for women and children is limited by law to 11 hours.
1905 Mata Hari first performs her dance act at the Guimet Museum, Paris
1913 Kansas legislature approved censorship of motion pictures
1918 Leon Trotsky gains control of the Red Army
1923 American inventor Lee de Forest demonstrates his sound-on-film moving pictures (NYC)
1933 American banks allowed to reopen after a government imposed bank holiday
1935 Driving tests introduced in Great Britain
1942 Julia Flikke of the Nurse Corps, becomes 1st woman colonel in US army
1943 Failed assassin attempt on Adolf Hitler during Smolensk-Rastenburg flight
1969 Apollo 9 returns to Earth
1980 Ford Motor Co found innocent in death of 3 women in a fiery Pinto
1986 Microsoft has its Initial public offering.
1987 John Gotti, boss of the Gambino crime family, is acquitted of racketeering
1989 27th shuttle, Discovery 8, launched, 1st woman to do the countdown
1991 Exxon pays $1-billion dollars in fines & cleanup of Valdez oil spill
2013 North Korea shreds the Korean Armistice agreement
2018 National Geographic magazine admits its past coverage was racist in issue to mark 50 years since death of Martin Luther King Jr.
2018 US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is fired via a tweet from President Donald Trump
2019 California Governor Gavin Newsom announces an indefinite moratorium on the death sentence in the state, saying it discriminates against marginalized communities
2019 Home of civil rights activists Medgar and Myrlie Evers established as a national monument in Jackson, Mississippi, by President Donald Trump
2020 Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates steps down from the company's board to focus on philanthropic activities