THE DAY IN HISTORY · AUGUST 13
August 13 in history
What happened on August 13: 4 moments from the Maps of History atlases, in 1521, 1956, 1961 and 1969, each linked to the map that shows it.
— Last stand at Tlatelolco
13 August 1521 — The defenders of Tenochtitlan made their last stand in Tlatelolco, where hunger, thirst and smallpox had killed tens of thousands. Cuauhtemoc, the last ruler, was captured on the lake. A plaque here calls the fall neither triumph nor defeat.
Tunisia decrees its Personal Status Code, abolishing polygamy and making divorce a matter for the courts, five months after independence.
READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE PROTEST AND CHANGE MAP →
— Building of the Berlin Wall
13 Aug 1961 — Overnight, barbed wire seals the last open door between the blocs; concrete follows. A state walling its own people in ends the Berlin crisis — by admitting everything.
READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE COLD WAR MAP → · THE FULL STORY →
— Tielieketi incident
13 Aug 1969 — Soviet troops with armoured vehicles destroy a Chinese border patrol near Lake Zhalanashkol on the Xinjiang–Kazakh border, killing about 30. A clash so far from the Ussuri convinced Beijing that a wider attack was possible; in October Lin Biao’s “Order No. 1” put the army on war alert.
READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC UNDER MAO MAP → · THE FULL STORY →
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