December 13 birthdays & history

Famous people born on December 13

• 1989Taylor Swift, American singer-songwriter
• 1797Heinrich Heine, German journalist, poet, and critic
• 1553Henry IV of France, King of France from 1589 to 1610
• 1929Christopher Plummer, Canadian actor and producer
• 1521Pope Sixtus V, Head of the Catholic Church from 1585 to 1590
• 1967Jamie Foxx, American actor, singer, songwriter, producer, and comedian
• 1953Ben Bernanke, American economist
• 1957Steve Buscemi, American actor and director
• 1923Philip Warren Anderson, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1981Amy Lee, American singer, songwriter and pianist

What happened on December 13

• 1577Francis Drake set sail from Plymouth, England, on his round-the-world voyage.
• 1769Dartmouth College was established by royal charter in present-day Hanover, New Hampshire.
• 19012-31 seconds before the epoch: The date at which all fixed-width 32-bit date processors will have overflown to and display; the year 2038 problem.
• 1928An American in Paris, a jazz-influenced orchestral piece by George Gershwin, premiered at Carnegie Hall in New York.
• 1949The Knesset votes to move the capital of Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
• 1959Archbishop Makarios III becomes the first President of Cyprus.
• 1962NASA launches Relay 1, the first active repeater communications satellite in orbit.
• 1972Apollo program: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the third and final extra-vehicular activity (EVA) or "Moonwalk" of Apollo 17. To date they are the last humans to set foot on the Moon.
• 1974Malta becomes a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations.
• 1988PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat gives a speech at a UN General Assembly meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, after United States authorities refused to grant him a visa to visit UN headquarters in New York.
• 2013Beyoncé released her fifth studio album without any prior announcement or promotion; it sold 2.3 million copies before the end of the year.
• 2019Jo Swinson steps down as Leader of the Liberal Democrats after losing her seat in the 2019 general election making her tenure the shortest in the party's history.

Also observed on December 13

• Acadian Remembrance Day (Acadians)
• National Day (Saint Lucia)
• Nusantara Day (Indonesia)
• Republic Day (Malta)
• Sailor's Day (Brazil)
• Saint Lucia Day (mainly in Scandinavia)