This Day in History
On Nov. 13, 1956, the Supreme Court struck down laws calling for racial segregation on public buses.
In 1312, England’s King Edward III was born at Windsor Castle.
In 1789, Benjamin Franklin wrote in a letter to a friend, Jean-Baptiste Leroy: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
In 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an unauthorized motion picture adaptation of the novel “Ben-Hur” by General Lew Wallace infringed on the book’s copyright.
In 1940, the Walt Disney film “Fantasia,” featuring animated segments set to classical music, had its world premiere in New York.
In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure lowering the minimum draft age from 21 to 18.
In 1969, speaking in Des Moines, Iowa, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew accused network television news departments of bias and distortion, and urged viewers to lodge complaints.
In 1974, Karen Silkwood, a 28-year-old technician and union activist at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron plutonium plant near Crescent, Oklahoma, died in a car crash while on her way to meet a reporter.
In 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
In 1985, some 23,000 residents of Armero, Colombia, died when a volcanic mudslide buried the city.
In 2000, lawyers for George W. Bush failed to win a court order barring manual recounts of ballots in Florida. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announced she would end the recounting at 5 p.m. Eastern time the next day – prompting an immediate appeal by lawyers for Al Gore.
In 2001, President George W. Bush approved the use of a special military tribunal that could put accused terrorists on trial faster and in greater secrecy than an ordinary criminal court. President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin met at the White House, where they pledged to slash Cold War-era nuclear arsenals by two-thirds.
In 2015, Islamic State militants carried out a set of coordinated attacks in Paris on the national stadium, restaurants and streets, and a crowded concert hall, killing 130 people in the worst attack on French soil since World War II.