THE DAY IN HISTORY · AUGUST 13

August 13 in history

What happened on August 13: 4 moments from the Maps of History atlases, in 1521, 1956, 1961 and 1969, each linked to the map that shows it.

1521 — Last stand at Tlatelolco

13 August 1521 — Tlatelolco was the site of the defenders’ last stand in Tenochtitlan. Hunger, thirst and smallpox had killed tens of thousands, and Cuauhtemoc, the last ruler, was captured on the lake. A plaque here describes the fall as neither triumph nor defeat.

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1956

Tunisia decrees its Personal Status Code, abolishing polygamy and making divorce a matter for the courts, five months after independence.

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1961 — Building of the Berlin Wall

13 Aug 1961 — Overnight, barbed wire closes the last open door between the blocs; concrete follows. The Berlin crisis ends with a state walling in its own people, a revealing admission about the division it has enforced.

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1969 — Tielieketi incident

13 Aug 1969 — Near Lake Zhalanashkol on the Xinjiang–Kazakh border, Soviet troops with armored vehicles destroy a Chinese border patrol, killing about 30. The clash is far from the Ussuri, and it convinces Beijing that a wider attack is possible. In October, Lin Biao’s “Order No. 1” puts the army on war alert.

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