#TodayInHistory – December 13

December 13 – Some important events on this day.

1294 👉🏼 Saint Celestine V abdicates the papacy after only five months; Celestine hoped to return to his previous life as an ascetic hermit.
1577 👉🏼 Sir Francis Drake sets sail from England on a circumnavigation of the world
1642 👉🏼 Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sights the South Island of present day New Zealand; initially he calls it Staten Landt and changes it a year later to Nieuw Zeeland
1916 👉🏼 Avalanche kills 10,000 Austrian and Italian troops in 24 hrs in Tyrol
1920 👉🏼 League of Nations establishes the International Court of Justice in The Hague
1920 👉🏼 Francis G. Pease’s interferometer at Mount Wilson Observatory is the first to measure the diameter of a star – the Betelgeuse
1974 👉🏼 Malta becomes a republic
1982 👉🏼 Earthquake hits Northern Yemen; 2,000 die
2002 👉🏼 Enlargement of the European Union: The European Union announces that Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia will become members from May 1, 2004.
2003 👉🏼 Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is captured near his home town of Tikrit, during Operation Red Dawn by US forces