TODAY IN HISTORY ― MARCH 13

March 13 is the 72nd day of the year (73rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 293 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Friday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Wednesday or Thursday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Monday or Saturday (56). 

NATIONAL EAR MUFF DAY 

624 – Battle of Badr: A key battle between Muhammad's army – the new followers of Islam and the Quraysh of Mecca. The Muslims won this battle, known as the turning point of Islam, which took place in the Hejaz region of western Arabia.

1639 – Harvard College is named after clergyman John Harvard.

1781 – German-born astronomer William Herschel discovers Uranus.

1862 – American Civil War: The U.S. federal government forbids all Union army officers from returning fugitive slaves, thus effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation.

1865 – American Civil War: The Confederate States of America agree to the use of African American troops.

1884 – The Siege of Khartoum, Sudan begins, ending on January 26, 1885. English General Charles George Gordon is killed in the final battle. 

1930 – The news of the discovery of Pluto is telegraphed to the Harvard College Observatory.

1933 – Great Depression: Banks in the U.S. begin to re-open after President Franklin D. Roosevelt mandates a "bank holiday".

1940 – The Russo-Finnish Winter War ends. The Soviet Union ostensibly sought to claim parts of Finnish territory, demanding—amongst other concessions—that Finland cede substantial border territories in exchange for land elsewhere, claiming security reasons, primarily the protection of Leningrad.

1943 – The Holocaust: German forces liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Kraków, Poland.

1957 – Cuban student revolutionaries storm the presidential palace in Havana in a failed attempt on the life of President Fulgencio Batista.

1963 – Police in Phoenix, Arizona arrest Ernesto Miranda and charge him with kidnap and rape. His conviction is ultimately set aside by the United States Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona.

1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module.

1985 – The Kenilworth Road riot takes place at an association football match at Kenilworth Road in Luton, England with disturbances before, during and after an F.A. Cup 6th Round tie between Luton Town F.C. and Millwall F.C.

1991 – The United States Department of Justice announces that Exxon has agreed to pay $1 billion for the clean-up of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

1996 – Dunblane school massacre: in Dunblane, Scotland, 16 primary school children and one teacher are shot dead by spree killer Thomas Watt Hamilton who then commits suicide.

1997 – India's Missionaries of Charity chooses Sister Nirmala to succeed Mother Teresa as its leader.

1997 – The Phoenix Lights are seen over Phoenix, Arizona by hundreds of people, and by millions on television.

2003 – Human evolution: The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old footprints of an upright-walking human had been found in Italy.

2008 – Gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $1,000 per ounce for the first time.

2013 – Pope Francis is elected, in the papal conclave, as the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church.


BORN TODAY

1855 – Percival Lowell, American astronomer and mathematician (d. 1916) 

1899 – John Hasbrouck Van Vleck, American physicist and mathematician, Manhattan Project, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1980)

1903 – Yasutaro Koide, Japanese super-centenarian (d. 2016)

1908 – Myrtle Bachelder, American chemist and Women's Army Corps officer (d. 1997) 

1914 – Edward O'Hare, American lieutenant and pilot, Medal of Honor recipient, O'Hare Airport (d. 1943)

1950 – Charles Krauthammer, American physician, journalist, and author

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.