May 13: What Happened on This Day in History (Elementary Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1787 - Captain Arthur Phillip leaves Portsmouth, England, with eleven ships full of convicts (the "First Fleet") to establish a penal colony in Australia.
2. 1861 - American Civil War: Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom issues a "proclamation of neutrality" which recognizes the breakaway states as having belligerent rights.
3. 1862 - The USS Planter, a steamer and gunship, steals through confederate lines and is passed to the Union, by a southern slave, Robert Smalls, who later was officially appointed as captain, becoming the first man with dark skin to command a United States ship.
4. 1880 - In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison performs the first test of his electric railway.
5. 1958 - Ben Carlin becomes the first (and only) person to circumnavigate the world by amphibious vehicle, having travelled over 17,000 kilometres (11,000 mi) by sea and 62,000 kilometres (39,000 mi) by land during a ten-year journey
6. Famous Birthdays: Ole Worm (Danish physician), Alexis Clairaut (French mathematician, astronomer, and geophysicist), Ronald Ross (Indian-English physician, Nobel Prize laureate), Georges Braque (French painter and sculptor), Trevor Baylis (English inventor, invented the wind-up radio)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: May 12

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: May 14

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.