13 Esfand 1404

Events

• 1686 (340 years ago) After being unofficially established as a settlement in 1678, the Dominican mission of Ilagan is founded in the Philippines.
• 1848 (178 years ago) Carlo Alberto di Savoia signs the Statuto Albertino that will later represent the first constitution of the Regno d'Italia.
• 1941 (85 years ago) World War II: The United Kingdom launches Operation Claymore on the Lofoten Islands, the first large-scale British Commando raid.
• 1944 (82 years ago) World War II: After the success of Big Week, the USAAF begins a daylight bombing campaign of Berlin.
• 1962 (64 years ago) A Caledonian Airways Douglas DC-7 crashes shortly after takeoff from Cameroon, killing 111 – the worst crash of a DC-7.
• 1980 (46 years ago) Nationalist leader Robert Mugabe wins a sweeping election victory to become Zimbabwe's first black prime minister.
• 1986 (40 years ago) The Soviet Vega 1 begins returning images of Halley's Comet and the first images of its nucleus.
• 2012 (14 years ago) A series of explosions is reported at a munitions dump in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of the Congo, killing at least 250 people.

Births

• 1678 (348 years ago) Antonio Vivaldi, Italian violinist and composer (died 1741)
• 1769 (257 years ago) Muhammad Ali, Ottoman military leader and pasha (died 1849)
• 1932 (94 years ago) Miriam Makeba, South African singer-songwriter and actress (died 2008)
• 1938 (88 years ago) Alpha Condé, Guinean politician, President of Guinea
• 1954 (72 years ago) François Fillon, French lawyer and politician, Prime Minister of France
• 1954 (72 years ago) Catherine O'Hara, Canadian-American actress and comedian (died 2026)
• 1965 (61 years ago) Khaled Hosseini, Afghan-American novelist
• 1968 (58 years ago) Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greek banker and politician, Prime Minister of Greece

Deaths

• 561 (1465 years ago) Pelagius I, pope of the Catholic Church
• 1193 (833 years ago) Saladin, founder of the Ayyubid Sultanate (born 1137)
• 1832 (194 years ago) Jean-François Champollion, French philologist and scholar (born 1790)
• 1852 (174 years ago) Nikolai Gogol, Ukrainian-Russian short story writer, novelist, and playwright (born 1809)
• 1916 (110 years ago) Franz Marc, German painter (born 1880)
• 1948 (78 years ago) Antonin Artaud, French actor and director (born 1896)
• 2011 (15 years ago) Simon van der Meer, Dutch-Swiss physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1925)
• 2020 (6 years ago) Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Peruvian politician and diplomat (born 1920)

All 680 events, births and deaths of March 4