#TodayInHistory – June 13
3 min read
June 13 – Some important events on this day.
1373 👉🏼 Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of Alliance (world’s oldest extant) signed in London
1381 👉🏼 Peasant army marches into London.
During the Peasants’ Revolt, a large mob of English peasants led by Wat Tyler marches into London and begins burning and looting the city. Several government buildings were destroyed, prisoners were released, and a judge was beheaded along with several dozen other leading citizens.
The Peasants’ Revolt had its origins in a severe manifestation of bubonic plague in the late 1340s, which killed nearly a third of the population of England. The scarcity of labor brought on by the Black Death led to higher wages and parliament, however, resisted these changes to its traditional feudal system and passed laws to hold down wages while encouraging landlords to reassert their ancient manorial rights. In 1380, peasant discontent reached a breaking point when Parliament restricted voting rights through an increase of the poll tax, and the Peasants’ Revolt began.
1789 👉🏼 Mrs Alexander Hamilton serves ice cream for dessert to Washington 🍦
1866 👉🏼 US House of representatives passes 14th Amendment (Civil rights)
1878 👉🏼 Congress of Berlin begins, determines the territories of the states in the Balkan peninsula following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78
1886 👉🏼 Fire destroys nearly 1,000 buildings in Vancouver, British Columbia 🇨🇦
1895 👉🏼 Emile Levassor wins the first automobile race in history the Paris-Bordeaux-Paris, taking 48 hours and 48 minutes (1,178 km)
1907 👉🏼 Lowest temperature ever in 48 US states for June, 2°F (-16° C) Tamarack, California⛄️
1920 👉🏼 US Post Office says children cannot not be sent by parcel post (after various instances).
When the US postal service began parcel deliveries in 1913 it wasn’t long before some ingenious parents cottoned on to the idea of mailing their children. A 10-month old baby boy, the child of Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Beauge from Batavia, Ohio, was posted for the cost of 15c in stamps, though his parents did insure him for $50. In the most famous case, 5-year-old May Pierstorff was mailed via train from her home in Idaho, the stamps stuck to her coat.
The practice is not as callous as it first appears, postmen were trusted local officials whom rural people usually knew personally. May Pierstorff was herself sent with a cousin who was a postal clerk. Nevertheless the US postal service tried to shut the practice down and had to issue a directive that no humans were to be carried in the mail.
1922 👉🏼 Longest recorded attack of hiccups begins: Charlie Osborne gets the hiccups and continues for 68 years, dies 11 months after it stops
1956 👉🏼 The last British troops leave the Suez Canal Zone in Egypt
1978 👉🏼 Film “Grease” opens, starring John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John, based on the 1971 musical 🎥
2000 👉🏼 South Korean President Kim Dae Jung meets leader of North Korea Kim Jong-il, for the beginning of the first ever inter-Korea summit, in the northern capital of Pyongyang
2015 👉🏼 Floods in Tbilisi, Georgia, kill 12 people and free animals from the city’s zoo including bears and hippos to roam the city.