A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on November 13th. For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper On November 13, 1002, English king Æthelred II the Unready ordered the killing of all Danes in England, known today as the St. Brice’s Day massacre. On November 13, 1901, a British lifeboat crew answered the distress flares of a small ship in peril off the coast of Norfolk, England, only to suffer terrible hardships in attempting to launch their lifeboat from…
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A Brief History On November 13, 1922, the United States Supreme Court decision called Zucht v. King, upheld the discretion that allowed a Texas school board to require mandatory vaccination of school children against smallpox. Digging Deeper The court cited a previous decision, Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), that allowed states to force vaccination and claimed that the “police power” of the state to maintain “health and safety” of the public justified such measures. Today, smallpox is virtually eradicated, but other old diseases keep cropping up as do new germs and viruses. As we found out in 2020, mankind is always…
A Brief History On November 13, 2019, we celebrate “Lucky 13” by telling the history of the card game, Poker, a game that enjoys widespread popularity and comes in so many forms it would be difficult to explain all the different games. In 1937, R. F. Foster wrote: “the game of poker, as first played in the United States, five cards to each player from a twenty-card pack, is undoubtedly the Persian game of As-Nas.” Ah, but more recent historians, including David Parlett, that study the origins of poker have concluded that Mr. Foster was wrong! They claim poker evolved…
A Brief History On November 13, 1901, a British lifeboat crew answered the distress flares of a small ship in peril off the coast of Norfolk, England, only to suffer terrible hardships in attempting to launch their lifeboat from shore to go to the sailors in peril. So hazardous were the conditions, that the lifeboat ended up being turned over on top of the crewmen, causing 9 of the heroic rescuers to drown. Cases in which rescuers end up being killed or severely injured themselves are not at all rare, and today we will discuss a few such cases. Digging…
A Brief History On November 13, 2017, in the United States we celebrate the annual chance for unmarried spinsters to catch themselves a husband in the Sadie Hawkins Day race for freedom. Started by cartoonist Al Capp in his Lil Abner cartoon back in 1937, the race pits unmarried women against eligible bachelors, with the only rule being if she catches him, she keeps him! Digging Deeper The story in the comic strip is about a 35 year old denizen of Dogpatch, unmarried at that advanced age and facing spinsterhood. Her father, a big deal in those parts (major potato…