A Year In History: 1913

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This Year in History:

1913

Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.

February 1

Multi-sport star Jim Thorpe signs MLB contract with Giants

On February 1, 1913, 25-year-old multi-sport star Jim Thorpe—who won two gold medals at the  1912 Olympics—signs a Major League Baseball contract with the New York Giants. The signing comes on the same day Thorpe returns his Olympic medals to Sweden for a violation of amateur rules. Years earlier, he was paid to play minor league […]

May 29

Controversial ballet “Le Sacre du printemps”—”The Rite of Spring”—performed in Paris

On the night of Thursday, May 29, 1913, the pioneering Russian ballet corps Ballet Russes performs Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), choreographed by the famous dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, at the Theatre de Champs-Elysees in Paris. In founding the Ballet Russes in 1909, the flamboyant impresario Serge Diaghilev was searching […]

October 7

Moving assembly line debuts at Ford factory

For the first time, Henry Ford’s entire Highland Park, Michigan automobile factory is run on a continuously moving assembly line when the chassis–the automobile’s frame–is assembled using the revolutionary industrial technique. A motor and rope pulled the chassis past workers and parts on the factory floor, cutting the man-hours required to complete one “Model T.” […]

December 12

Stolen “Mona Lisa” recovered in Florence

Two years after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece The Mona Lisa is recovered inside Italian waiter Vincenzo Peruggia’s hotel room in Florence. Peruggia had previously worked at the Louvre and had participated in the heist with a group of accomplices dressed as Louvre janitors on the morning […]