Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/December 13

This is a list of selected December 13 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.

To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.

← December 12	December 14 →

Staging area

Images

Use only ONE image at a time

• 
  Pope Paul III
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  Baker Building at Dartmouth College
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  The Sherman Fairchild Sciences complex at Dartmouth College
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  Ambrose Burnside
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  Baiji, or Chinese River Dolphin
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  Saddam Hussein captured by U.S. forces
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  William Waller
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  The Army of the Potomac crossing the Rappahannock during the Battle of Fredericksburg
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  Wojciech Jaruzelski

Ineligible

Blurb	Reason
; Republic Day in Malta (1974)	refimprove section
1636 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony organized three militia units, an act considered to be the founding of the National Guard of the United States.	refimprove section
1642 – Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European explorer to see New Zealand.	featured on November 24
1939 – Second World War: The Royal Navy cruisers HMS Exeter, HMS Ajax and HMNZS Achilles defeated the German Deutschland class cruiser Admiral Graf Spee off the estuary of the River Plate off the coast of Argentina and Uruguay.	refimprove section
2003 – Post-invasion Iraq: During Operation Red Dawn, American forces found former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein hiding in a spider hole and captured him.	refimprove

Eligible

• 1545 – The Council of Trent, an ecumenical council convoked by Pope Paul III in response to the growth of Protestantism, opened in Trent, Bishopric of Trent (now in modern Italy).
• 1643 – First English Civil War: Parliamentary forces serving under Sir William Waller led a successful surprise attack on a winter garrison of Royalist infantry and cavalry.
• 1758 – While transporting Acadians from Prince Edward Island to France, the Duke William sank in the North Atlantic with the loss of over 360 lives, one of the greatest marine disasters in Canadian history.
• 1769 – Dartmouth College in present-day Hanover, New Hampshire, US, was established by a Royal Charter and became the last university founded in the Thirteen Colonies before the American Revolution.
• 1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Japanese forces captured Nanjing in China and then began to commit numerous atrocities over the next several weeks.
• 1981 – Polish Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law, suspended Solidarity and imprisoned many union leaders.
• 2001 – The Parliament of India was attacked by five gunmen, resulting in 12 deaths, including those of the perpetrators.
• 2011 – After killing a woman at his home, a man threw grenades and fired an automatic rifle at crowds in the Place Saint-Lambert, Liège, Belgium, killing five people and injuring 125 others, before committing suicide.

December 13: Saint Lucy's Day in Italy and Scandinavia

Haile Selassie

• 1577 – Sir Francis Drake left Plymouth, England, with five ships and 164 men on his round-the-world voyage.
• 1862 – American Civil War: Union forces under Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside suffered severe casualties against entrenched Confederate defenders at the Battle of Fredericksburg in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
• 1960 – With Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie (pictured) out of the country, four conspirators staged a coup attempt and installed Crown Prince Asfaw Wossen as the new Emperor.
• 1989 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army engaged in a fierce firefight with the King's Own Scottish Borderers at a vehicle checkpoint complex in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland.
• 2006 – The baiji, a freshwater dolphin found only in the Yangtze River in China, was announced as functionally extinct by leaders of the Yangtze Freshwater Dolphin Expedition.

More anniversaries:

• December 12
• December 13
• December 14