February 13

February 13 in history:

• 1258, Baghdad falls to the Mongols, and the Abbasid Caliphate is destroyed

• 1635, the first public school in the U.S., Boston Latin School, is founded

• 1795, the University of North Carolina became the first U.S. state university to admit students with the arrival of Hinton James, who was the only student on campus for two weeks

• 1880, Thomas Edison observes the "Edison effect", the thermally excited charge emission process

• 1920, the League of Nations recognized the perpetual neutrality of Switzerland

• 1935, a jury in Flemington, N.J., found Bruno Richard Hauptmann guilty of first-degree murder in the kidnap-slaying of the son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh. (Hauptmann was later executed.)

• 1945, during World War II, the Soviets captured Budapest, Hungary, from the Germans. ALSO: Allied planes began bombing the German city of Dresden

• 1955, Israel obtains 4 of the 7 Dead Sea scrolls

• 1960, France exploded its first atomic bomb, in the Sahara Desert

• 1981, a series of sewer explosions destroys more than two miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky

• 1990, an agreement is reached for a two-stage plan to reunite Germany.

• 1997, Discovery's astronauts hauled the Hubble Space Telescope aboard the shuttle for a 1 billion-mile tuneup to allow it to peer even deeper into the far reaches of the universe.

• 1997, On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average broke through the 7,000 barrier for the first time, ending the day at 7,022.44

• 2000, the last original "Peanuts" comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies

• 2002, John Walker Lindh pleaded not-guilty in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to conspiring to kill Americans and supporting the Taliban and terrorist organizations.

• 2002, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II made former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani an honorary knight

• 2003, an investigative panel found that superheated air almost certainly seeped through a breach in space shuttle Columbia's left wing and possibly its wheel compartment during the craft's fiery descent, resulting in the deaths of all seven astronauts

• 2006, auditors reported that millions of dollars in Hurricane Katrina disaster aid had been squandered, paying for such items as a $450 tattoo and $375-a-day beachfront condos