Today in History

February 13

1689 - English Parliament adopts a Bill of Rights.

1795 - The first US state university opens in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

1816 - The Teatro di San Carlo opera house in Naples, Italy is destroyed by fire.

1856 - Britain annexes Oudh in India, increasing further hostility to British rule.

1920 - The League of Nations recognises Switzerland’s neutrality.

1935 - American cardiac surgeon Claude Beck carries out the first surgical operation to successfully relieve angina in humans in Cleveland, Ohio.

1945 - Allied forces capture Budapest, Hungary, in the Second World War.

1952 - Rocky Marciano defeats Lee Savold for his 39th straight win.

1960 - France detonates its first atomic bomb.

1976 - Nigerian junta leader General Murtala Ramat Mohammad is assassinated.

1984 - Konstantin Chernenko succeeds Yuri Andropov as Soviet leader.

1990 - The American space probe Voyager I snaps a photo of the entire solar system.

1994 - Somali gunmen kidnap two Italian aid workers and an Egyptian UN peacekeeper is killed.

1996 - Israeli troops seal off the West Bank and Gaza to prevent terrorist attacks.

1997 - Rebels under Laurent Kabila take Zairian town of Faradje while advancing on country’s third largest city, Kisangani.

2000 - Top seed Nicolas Kiefer lifts the Duty Free Dubai Tennis Open.

2003 - Police arrested a Venezuelan man carrying a live hand grenade at Britain’s Gatwick airport.

2004 - Chechnya’s exiled former president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev is assassinated in Doha.

2005 - A Shiite bloc wins Iraq’s first election since Saddam Hussain’s overthrow.

2006 - The RAK Airways is launched in Ras Al Khaimah.

2007 - North Korea agrees with US and four regional powers on nuclear disarmament plan.

2012 - A lightweight rocket aimed at securing Europe a stake in the market to launch small satellites lifts off from Kourou space base on its maiden flight.