| 13 February 1130 | Papal States, Italy [administration] | Following the death of Pope Honorius II, both Gregory Papareschi (as Innocent II) and Peter Pierleoni (as Anacletus II) are elected pope by different factions among the cardinals; Innocent is forced to leave Rome. |
| 13 February 1542 | England [crime and punishment] | King Henry VIII of England has Catherine Howard, his fifth wife, beheaded in the Tower of London for adultery. |
| 13 February 1668 | Spain, Portugal [treaties] | After a twenty-eight year struggle, Spain finally recognizes the independence of Portugal in the Treaty of Lisbon. The sovereignty of the Braganza family is secured. |
| 13 February 1689 | UK [political events] | The Convention Parliament offers the crown of England to the Dutch stadtholder William of Orange and his wife Mary, the daughter of King James II who has been declared as having abdicated, an act known as the ‘Glorious Revolution’. They also present a Declaration of Rights which states that parliamentary consent is needed to make or suspend laws, to levy taxes, or to maintain a standing army, that the dispensing power is illegal, that petitioning is lawful, and that free elections should be held for frequent parliaments. A Committee of Parliament is created to convert this Declaration into a Bill of Rights. |
| 13 February 1728 | America [births and deaths] | Cotton Mather, New England author, educator, and Congregational minister, son of Increase Mather, dies in Boston, Massachusetts (65). |
| 13 February 1779 | Pacific [exploration] | English explorer James Cook returns to Hawaii, where his crew have a disagreement with some of the indigenous population. After a hasty departure, Cook's ship, the Resolution, is damaged, and he is forced to land again, where he is killed in an argument over a stolen boat. |
| 13 February 1779 | England, Pacific [births and deaths] | James Cook, the English naval captain and navigator who explored Canada's coasts and the Pacific, is killed in Hawaii (50). |
| 13 February 1793 | France, UK, Austria-HM, Prussia, Spain [French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1801)] | The First Coalition against France is formed by Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, the Dutch Republic, Spain, and Sardinia. |
| 13 February 1883 | Germany, Venice [births and deaths] | (Wilhelm) Richard Wagner, German dramatic composer and theorist, who wrote the operatic sequence Der Ring des Nibelungen/The Ring of the Nibelung dies in Venice, Italy (69). |
| 13 February 1895 | France [cinema and film] | French inventors Auguste and Louis Lumière patent the cinématograph, a device for taking and projecting moving pictures. On 28 December 1895, in the basement of the Grande Café in Paris, France, they show the film La Sortie des ouvriers de l'usine Lumière/Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, the first film shown to a paying public. It sparks an entire new industry. It is also the first documentary film, and projects at 16 frames per second. They make more than 40 films during 1896 and record everyday French life. |
| 13 February 1909 | Anatolia, Ottoman Empire [administration] | The grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire, Kiamil Pasha, is forced to resign by the Turkish nationalists, who now dominate the Ottoman parliament. |
| 13 February 1923 | [births and deaths] | Charles (Chuck) E Yeager, US test pilot, the first person to break the sound barrier, born in Myra, West Virginia. |
| 13–15 February 1945 | Germany, UK, USA [World War II (1939–45)] | British and US aircraft bomb the city of Dresden in eastern Germany, ostensibly to disrupt the transfer of German troops to the Soviet front. Over 60,000 people are killed and the city's historic centre is destroyed. |
| 13 February 1960 | France [weapons] | France explodes an atomic bomb over the Sahara Desert, thus becoming the fourth atomic power. |
| 13 February 1971 | Laos, South Vietnam, North Vietnam [Vietnam War (1954–75)] | South Vietnamese troops invade Laos to close the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the North Vietnamese. |
| 13 February 1973 | USA [banking and finance] | The USA devalues the dollar by 10% by raising the price of gold to $42.22 an ounce. |
| 13 February 1975 | Cyprus [political events] | Northern Cyprus declares its separate existence as the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus. |
| 13 February 1984 | USSR [political parties] | Konstantin Chernenko is named first secretary of the Soviet Communist Party following the death of Yuri Andropov. |
| 13 February 1998 | Australia [elections] | The Australian Constitutional Convention votes to replace the queen as head of state with a president chosen by a bipartisan parliamentary majority. A public referendum in 1999 will decide whether the country should become a republic. |
| 13 February 2007 | North Korea [weapons] | Following fresh multilateral talks involving the USA, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan, the North Korean government, which carried out its first nuclear weapon test in October 2006, agrees to shut down its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and readmit international inspectors in return for fuel aid. |
