December 13 in History

The United States Mint began striking the Susan B. Anthony dollar on December 13, 1978, at the Philadelphia Mint, producing the first American coin to feature a real, historical woman on its face. Previous coins had used allegorical female figures like Liberty, but Anthony was the first named individual woman to appear on circulating U.S. currency. Susan Brownell Anthony had been the dominant figure in the American women's suffrage movement for over fifty years, from the 1850s through her death in 1906. She was arrested in 1872 for voting in a presidential election in Rochester, New York, at a time when women were legally prohibited from voting. She was tried, convicted, and fined $100, which she refused to pay. The Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, is sometimes called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. The coin entered circulation in July 1979 and was immediately unpopular. Its size and color were nearly identical to the quarter, causing constant confusion in vending machines, cash registers, and pockets. The public rejected it. The Mint produced over 800 million Anthony dollars between 1979 and 1981, but most ended up in Federal Reserve vaults rather than in circulation. The design failure was a missed opportunity. The choice to honor Anthony was itself significant, representing the first time the U.S. government acknowledged a specific woman's contribution to American history on the coins people used daily. But the coin's practical failures overshadowed its symbolic importance. A small additional run was minted in 1999 to meet demand from transit authorities and vending machine operators before the Sacagawea dollar replaced it in 2000. The Sacagawea coin was gold-colored and smooth-edged, specifically designed to be distinguishable from the quarter. It fared better in practice but was also largely rejected by the public, who preferred paper dollars. The Anthony dollar remains historically significant as the moment the United States finally placed a real woman on its currency, and as a case study in how poor design can undermine a powerful idea.

Seven inmates overpowered guards, stole sixteen rifles, and walked out of the John B. Connally Unit, a Texas maximum-security prison near Kenedy, on December 13, 2000. They had planned for months. The escapees impersonated prison officials during a maintenance period, gaining access to the back gate by claiming a civilian maintenance crew needed to bring in equipment. The guards they left behind were bound with duct tape in an electrical room. For six weeks, the Texas Seven lived as fugitives, robbing stores across the state while traveling in a motor home. The group's crime spree turned deadly on Christmas Eve when they hit an Oshman's sporting goods store in Irving. Officer Aubrey Hawkins, twenty-nine years old and married eight months, was working an off-duty security detail. He confronted the robbers in the parking lot. They shot him eleven times with multiple weapons, then ran over him with a vehicle as they fled. The killing transformed the case from a prison escape into a capital murder investigation. An America's Most Wanted broadcast on January 20, 2001, generated over two thousand tips, and the fugitives were traced to a trailer park in Woodland Park, Colorado, where they had been living under assumed names. One member, Larry Harper, killed himself during the arrest. The remaining six were captured over two days. Four received death sentences for Hawkins's murder. The escape exposed catastrophic security failures at the Connally Unit, including inadequate staffing, poor communication systems, and a civilian access protocol that the inmates had studied and exploited. The Texas prison system implemented sweeping security reforms in response.

Gore stood at the podium for four minutes and twelve seconds. Thirty-six days after election night, after Florida recounts, butterfly ballots, hanging chads, and a Supreme Court case that will be debated for as long as American law is taught, he conceded. "Just moments ago, I spoke with George W. Bush and congratulated him on becoming the forty-third president of the United States." The 2000 presidential election was the closest in 124 years. Gore won the national popular vote by 543,895 votes but lost the Electoral College when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Bush v. Gore to halt the Florida recount. Bush led in Florida by 537 votes out of nearly six million cast, a margin of 0.009 percent. The Florida controversy exposed every flaw in the American election system: punch-card ballots that did not fully perforate, a confusing butterfly ballot design in Palm Beach County that likely cost Gore thousands of votes, voter roll purges that disproportionately removed Black voters, and local election officials making subjective decisions about individual ballots. The "Brooks Brothers riot," in which Republican operatives disrupted a Miami-Dade recount, introduced organized intimidation into the modern vote-counting process. Gore's concession speech on December 13 was widely praised for its grace. He urged unity, quoted his father on the sting of losing, and never mentioned the popular vote margin. The decision to concede rather than pursue further legal challenges was debated by his supporters for years. The election changed American politics permanently, demonstrating that the presidency could be decided by a handful of votes in a single state and by a single vote on the Supreme Court.

Robert Guiscard's forces force Salerno's surrender, shattering Norman control over southern Italy and leaving only the citadel under Duke Gisulf's stubborn defense. This victory secures the Duchy of Apulia and Calabria for the Normans, eliminating the last major Lombard stronghold in the region before Gisulf finally capitulates months later. The event's repercussions extended well beyond its immediate context, influencing developments across the region for years to come.

An 85-year-old hermit who lived in a cave, ate roots, and hadn't seen Rome in decades became Pope in July 1294. Pietro del Morrone never wanted it. Cardinals chose him precisely because he was holy and unworldly—easy to control. He wasn't. Within weeks he couldn't manage the bureaucracy, spoke no Latin at mass, and appointed 12 new cardinals in a single day because someone asked nicely. By December he'd consulted canon lawyers, found nothing forbidding resignation, and walked away. First pope ever to quit. His successor, Boniface VIII, immediately imprisoned him in a castle—couldn't risk a rival pope wandering around. Pietro died there ten months later, still in chains. The Church made him a saint anyway.

Eleazar Wheelock wanted to convert Native Americans to Christianity. King George III gave him a charter. John Wentworth donated New Hampshire wilderness. Within a decade, only three of Dartmouth's 200 students were Indigenous—the mission had already shifted to educating white colonists' sons. The college Wheelock built to "civilize" Native youth became one of America's elite institutions for exactly the people who'd displace them. By 1770, Wheelock was complaining that Indigenous students were "too attached to their own way of living" to transform. The royal charter outlasted the king who granted it: Dartmouth successfully argued in 1819 that even state legislatures couldn't alter a contract made by the Crown. A missionary school became a precedent for corporate rights.

Confederate forces behind a stone wall at Marye's Heights repulsed fourteen successive Union assault waves at the Battle of Fredericksburg, inflicting over 12,600 casualties on Ambrose Burnside's Army of the Potomac while losing fewer than 5,000 men. Union soldiers charged uphill across open ground against entrenched defenders in one of the most lopsided defeats of the war. The slaughter devastated Northern morale and cemented Robert E. Lee's reputation as a defensive tactician capable of inflicting catastrophic losses on numerically superior forces.

Union troops under General William B. Hazen seize Fort McAllister, cutting off Savannah's last supply line and pushing the city into imminent surrender. This decisive blow clears the path for Sherman to link up with the Union navy, effectively ending Confederate control over Georgia's vital coastal stronghold. The aftermath reshaped military strategies and diplomatic calculations across the region for years, altering the balance of power between the combatants.

Japanese troops breached Nanjing's walls after General Tang Shengzhi's defending garrison collapsed into a chaotic retreat, abandoning tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians. Over the following six weeks, Japanese soldiers systematically murdered an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 civilians and prisoners of war in what became known as the Nanjing Massacre. The atrocity remains one of the most contested and painful chapters in East Asian history.

Three outgunned Royal Navy cruisers engaged the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee in the South Atlantic, suffering heavy damage to HMS Exeter but forcing Captain Langsdorff to seek refuge in Montevideo harbor. The engagement, the first major naval battle of World War II, ended days later when Langsdorff scuttled his ship rather than face the British fleet.