ON THIS DAY

MARCH 13

Muhammad’s Muslim forces win a significant victory over Meccan army.

The Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, which would become Mexico City, is founded on a small island in Lake Texcoco.

Khoisan loot more than 40 cattle from Cape settlers.

1781 William Herschel discovers Uranus. 1881 Tsar Alexander II of Russia is assassinated with a thrown bomb.

De Beers Consolidated is founded to exercise control over virtually all the diamond production in South Africa.

British forces under Lord Roberts take Bloemfontein.

The length of the working day for women and children is reduced to 11 hours in France.

In a process known as Anschluss, Austria is annexed to Nazi Germany.

Viet Minh forces unleash a massive artillery barrage on the French to begin the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the climactic battle in the First Indochina War.

Students storm the presidential palace in Havana in a failed attempt on the life of Cuban president Fulgencio Batista. Bloody street battles follow.

SAA Rietbok crashes off Kayser’s Beach, East London; 25 people die.

Japan’s Seikan Tunnel, the world’s longest undersea tunnel, opens.

Sixteen primary schoolchildren and a teacher are shot dead by a suicidal killer In Dunblane, Scotland.

The US announces that Exxon has agreed to pay $1 billion for the clean-up of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

The Phoenix Lights are seen over Phoenix, Arizona by hundreds of people, and by millions on television. They were a series of widely sighted UFOs in the skies over Arizona, Nevada and the Mexican state of Sonora.

Encyclopedia Britannica announces it will no longer publish printed versions of its encyclopedia because of the wealth of information on the internet.

Argentinian cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio takes the name Pope Francis as the papal conference elects him as the 266th pope of the Catholic Church. His election is significant in that he is the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, the first from the southern hemisphere, the first to visit and hold papal mass in the Arabian Peninsula and the first pope from outside Europe since the Syrian, Gregory III, who reigned in the 8th century.