It happened today – this day in history – October 13

54AD: Nero succeeds Claudius as Emperor of Rome.

1628: The Dutch West Indies Co grants religious freedom in West Indies.

1775: Formation of the US Navy

1864: US state of Maryland abolishes slavery.

1870: Composer Gustav Mahler gives his first piano concert aged 10.

1884: Greenwich is established as the universal time meridian of longitude.

1905: Henry Irving (real name John Brodribb), the first actor to receive a knighthood, dies age 67.

1924: Mecca falls to Saudi forces without a fight.

1943: Italy declares war on its former Axis partner, Germany.

1960: Opponents of Fidel Castro are executed in Cuba.

1962: Edward Albee’s play ‘Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Wolf?’ opens on Broadway.

1963: The term “Beatlemania” is used for the first time in the British press the day after the band appears on the TV Show Sunday Night and the London Palladium.

1964: Australian swimmer Dawn Fraser wins her third consecutive Olympic 100m freestyle gold medal at the Tokyo Games.

1965: The Who recorded My Generation at Pye Studios in London.

1966: 173 US aircraft bomb North Vietnam.

1972: A plane flying from Uruguay to Chile crashes in the Andes Mountains. Passengers eat crash victims to survive and 16 of 45 are rescued two months later.

1973: Jordan enters the Yom Kippur war.

1975: Singer songwriter Neil Young undergoes throat surgery.

1988: The Shroud of Turin is shown by carbon-dating tests to be a fake from the Middle Ages.

1996: Damon Hill becomes the first son of a former champion to win the Formula One World Drivers Championship.

2010: The Copiapó mining accident in Chile comes to a happy end as all 33 miners come to the surface after surviving a record 69 days underground.

2016: Bob Dylan is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

BIIRTHDAYS: Nana Mouskouri, singer, 85; Chris Farlowe (John Deighton), singer, 79; Paul Simon, singer/songwriter 78; Robert Lamm, musician/songwriter (Chicago), 75; Edwina Currie, former politician, 73; Sammy Hagar, musician, 72; Marie Osmond, singer, 60; Paul Potts, singer, 49; Sacha Baron Cohen, comedian/actor, 48.