THE DAY IN HISTORY · DECEMBER 13
December 13 in history
What happened on December 13: 3 moments from the Maps of History atlases, in 1862, 1937 and 1950, each linked to the map that shows it.
— Battle of Fredericksburg
13 Dec 1862 — Burnside sends fourteen brigades against a stone wall on Marye’s Heights; 12,600 Union casualties buy nothing at all. Lee, watching: “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”
READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MAP → · THE FULL STORY →
Nanjing falls to the Japanese army; weeks of massacre follow. One of the war’s great atrocities — and it is still 1937.
READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE WW2 MAP →
— Battle of Chosin Reservoir
27 Nov–13 Dec 1950 — The Ninth Army Group traps the US 1st Marine Division around the Changjin (Chosin) reservoir at thirty degrees below freezing. The Marines fight their way out to the coast; the Chinese divisions, many still in thin cotton uniforms, lose tens of thousands of men to frostbite and cold as well as to battle.
READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC UNDER MAO MAP → · THE FULL STORY →
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