Today in History, April 13th
On April 13, 1919, troops fired on a crowd at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, India. Plus Apollo 13's explosion and Jefferson's birthday.
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April 13 is best known for 1919, when British-led troops opened fire on a crowd at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, India, a massacre that pushed Mahatma Gandhi toward demanding full independence. The date also saw an oxygen tank explode aboard Apollo 13 in 1970, and it is Thomas Jefferson’s birthday.
The big story: The Amritsar massacre (1919)
In April 1919, the city of Amritsar in the Punjab was under martial law, and Brig. Gen. Reginald Dyer had banned public gatherings. But it was the Sikh festival of Baisakhi, and tens of thousands of people had come in from the countryside. On April 13, thousands crowded into Jallianwala Bagh, a city park, where a protest was underway against forced conscription and a heavy war tax. Many had no idea meetings were forbidden. Dyer arrived with British and Gurkha troops and ordered them to fire without warning. They kept shooting until their ammunition ran out. Several hundred people were killed, with at least 379 deaths reported, and well over a thousand were wounded. Dyer later said he had acted for the “moral effect” it would have, and British authorities removed him from his post. The massacre hardened Indian opinion. Gandhi, who had backed Britain during World War I, decided that India should settle for nothing less than full independence.
More events on April 13
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1598 | King Henry IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes, granting religious liberty to the Protestant Huguenots. |
| 1742 | George Frideric Handel’s Messiah premiered in Dublin, Ireland (Old Style date). |
| 1870 | The Metropolitan Museum of Art was incorporated in New York City. |
| 1928 | Hermann Köhl, James Fitzmaurice and Baron Ehrenfried Günther von Hünefeld completed the first nonstop transatlantic flight from Europe to North America. |
| 1941 | The Soviet Union and Japan signed a five-year neutrality pact. |
| 1943 | The Thomas Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. |
| 1964 | Sidney Poitier became the first African American to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, for Lilies of the Field. |
| 1970 | An oxygen tank exploded aboard Apollo 13, about 200,000 miles from Earth, ending hopes of a Moon landing. |
| 1976 | The U.S. brought back the $2 bill for the nation’s bicentennial. |
| 1997 | Tiger Woods won the Masters by a record 12 strokes, becoming its youngest champion and the first of African American descent. |
| 2002 | A coup that had installed an interim president in Venezuela collapsed, and Hugo Chávez was returned to power the next morning. |
| 2017 | U.S. forces in Afghanistan dropped the bomb nicknamed the “Mother of All Bombs” on an Islamic State tunnel complex. |
Born on April 13
- 1743: Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence and later U.S. president, born in Shadwell, Virginia (April 2 by the Old Style calendar then in use).
- 1866: Butch Cassidy, outlaw who led the Wild Bunch gang, born in Beaver, Utah.
- 1946: Al Green, soul singer and songwriter, born in Forrest City, Arkansas.
Sources
- The Amritsar Massacre, History.com
- Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- This Day in History: April 13, History.com
- What happened on April 13, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Thomas Jefferson, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Butch Cassidy, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Al Green, Encyclopaedia Britannica
