May 13 birthdays & history

Famous people born on May 13

• 1792Pope Pius IX, Head of the Catholic Church from 1846 to 1878
• 1717Maria Theresa, Archduchess, Queen, and Empress; Austrian wife of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor
• 1840Alphonse Daudet, French author, poet, and playwright
• 1950Stevie Wonder, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and producer
• 1857Ronald Ross, Indian-English physician and mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1986Robert Pattinson, English actor
• 1993Romelu Lukaku, Belgian footballer
• 1882Georges Braque, French painter and sculptor
• 1983Yaya Touré, Ivorian footballer
• 1907Daphne du Maurier, English novelist and playwright

What happened on May 13

• 1725Johann Sebastian Bach first performed the church cantata Sie werden euch in den Bann tun, BWV 183 in Leipzig, Germany.
• 1830Ecuador gains its independence from Gran Colombia.
• 1861The Great Comet of 1861 is discovered by John Tebbutt of Windsor, New South Wales, Australia.
• 1861Pakistan's (then a part of British India) first railway line opens, from Karachi to Kotri.
• 1909The inaugural edition of the Giro d'Italia, a long-distance multiple-stage bicycle race, began in Milan; the Italian cyclist Luigi Ganna was the eventual winner.
• 1913The Russian inventor Igor Sikorsky flew the self-designed Russky Vityaz, the world's first four-engine fixed-wing aircraft.
• 1917Three children report the first apparition of Our Lady of Fátima in Fátima, Portugal.
• 1958The Australian adventurer Ben Carlin became the only person to circumnavigate the world in an amphibious vehicle, having travelled over 80,000 kilometres (50,000 miles) by land and sea.
• 1967Zakir Husain took office as the first elected Muslim President of India.
• 1992Li Hongzhi introduced the Falun Gong movement at a public lecture in Changchun, China.
• 1995Alison Hargreaves became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest without the aid of Sherpas or bottled oxygen.
• 2017Eurovision Song Contest: Portugal won the contest for the first time, with the song "Amar pelos dois," performed by Salvador Sobral.

Also observed on May 13

• Abbotsbury Garland Day (Dorset, England)
• Rotuma Day (Rotuma)