THE DAY IN HISTORY · DECEMBER 13
December 13 in history
What happened on December 13: 3 moments from the Maps of History atlases, in 1862, 1937 and 1950, each linked to the map that shows it.
— Battle of Fredericksburg
13 Dec 1862 — Burnside sends fourteen brigades against a stone wall on Marye’s Heights. The attacks gain nothing at the cost of 12,600 Union casualties. Watching the battle, Lee says: “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”
READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MAP → · THE FULL STORY →
Nanjing falls to the Japanese army; weeks of massacre follow. One of the war’s great atrocities — and it is still 1937.
READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE WW2 MAP →
— Battle of Chosin Reservoir
27 Nov–13 Dec 1950 — The Ninth Army Group traps the US 1st Marine Division around the Changjin (Chosin) reservoir in temperatures thirty degrees below freezing. The Marines fight their way to the coast. Many Chinese troops are still dressed in thin cotton uniforms, and their divisions lose tens of thousands of men to frostbite and cold as well as battle.
READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC UNDER MAO MAP → · THE FULL STORY →
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