Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 13
- 1781 – German-born British astronomer and composer William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus while in the garden of his house in Bath, Somerset, England, thinking it was a comet.
- 1845 – German composer Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, one of the most popular and most frequently performed violin concertos of all time, was first played in Leipzig, with violinist Ferdinand David as soloist.
- 1943 – The Holocaust: Nazi troops under SS Hauptsturmführer Amon Göth began liquidating the Jewish Ghetto in Kraków, Poland, sending about 8,000 Jews deemed able to work to the Plaszow labor camp. Those deemed unfit for work were either killed or sent to die at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
- 1954 – Viet Minh forces under Vo Nguyen Giap (pictured) unleashed a massive artillery barrage on the French military to begin the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the climactic battle in the First Indochina War.
- 1996 – In the deadliest attack on children in the history of the United Kingdom, a spree killer killed sixteen children and a teacher at a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland before committing suicide.