1913 in the United States

Incumbents

Federal Government">Federal government of the United States">Federal Government

• President: William Howard Taft , Woodrow Wilson
• Vice President: vacant, Thomas R. Marshall
• Chief Justice: Edward Douglass White
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Champ Clark
• Congress: 62nd, 63rd

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

January–March

• January - The magazine Vanity Fair is relaunched in New York City by Condé Montrose Nast.
• February 1 - New York City's Grand Central Terminal, having been rebuilt, reopens as the world's largest train station.
• February 3 - The 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose and collect income taxes.
• February 4 - Rosa Parks born
• February 17 - The Armory Show opens in New York City. It displays the works of artists who are to become some of the most influential painters of the early twentieth century.
• March 3 - The Woman Suffrage Procession takes place in Washington, D.C., initiated and organized by Alice Paul and led by Inez Milholland on horseback.
• March 4
• * Woodrow Wilson succeeds William Howard Taft as the 28th President of the United States.
• * The U.S. Department of Commerce and U.S. Department of Labor are established by splitting the duties of the 10-year-old Department of Commerce and Labor. The Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Fisheries and U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey form part of the Department of Commerce.
• * The first U.S. law regulating the shooting of migratory birds is passed.
• March 7 - The British freighter Alum Chine, carrying 343 tons of dynamite, explodes in Baltimore harbor.
• March 13 - Mexican Revolution: Pancho Villa returns to Mexico from his self-imposed exile in the United States.
• March 25 - Great Dayton Flood: Four days of rain in the Miami Valley flood the region and mark the worst natural disaster in Ohio's recorded history, killing over 360 people and destroying 20,000 homes, chiefly in Dayton.

  April–June

• April 5 - The United States Soccer Federation is formed.
• April 8 - The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is passed, dictating the direct election of senators.
• April 24 - The Woolworth Building opens in New York City. Designed by Cass Gilbert, it is the tallest building in the world at this date and for more than a decade after.
• April 26 - Mary Phagan is raped and strangled on the premises of the National Pencil Factory in Atlanta. Leo Frank is tried and convicted for the crime.
• May 1 - The Sherwood Hotel opened in Greene, NY
• May - The Paul Émile Chabas painting September Morn provokes a charge of indency when displayed in the window of a Chicago art gallery.
• May 14 - New York Governor William Sulzer approves the charter for the Rockefeller Foundation, which begins operations with a $100 million donation from John D. Rockefeller.
• June 13 - An International Railway trolley and passengers are buried under the contents of an overhead garbage chute that breaks in Niagara Falls, New York.
• June 15 - Battle of Bud Bagsak in the Philippines concludes with U.S. troops under General John J. Pershing taking Bug Bagsak from defending Moro rebels, killing at least 500.

  July–September

• July 3 - The fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg draws thousands of American Civil War veterans and their families to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
• July 10 - The temperature in Death Valley, California, hits 134 °F which is the highest recorded in the U.S..
• August 3 - Strike action by agricultural workers in Wheatland, California, degenerates into the "Wheatland hop riot", one of the first major farm labor confrontations in the state.
• September 8 - The largest commercial office building in the world opens in Saint Louis, Missouri, to great fanfare. The Railroad Exchange building houses 31 acres under one roof, and its central tenant, Famous-Barr Co., becomes the world's largest department store with over 1,500,000 square feet.
• September 19 - Francis Ouimet wins the U.S. Open championship by five strokes, becoming the first amateur to ever win the event.

  October–December

• October 3 - The United States Revenue Act of 1913 re-imposes the federal income tax and lowers basic tariff rates from 40% to 25%.
• October 7 – The Ford Motor Company starts production of the Model T on the assembly line in Detroit
• October 10 - President Woodrow Wilson triggers the explosion of the Gamboa Dike, ending construction on the Panama Canal.
• October 31
• * Indianapolis Streetcar Strike of 1913: Public transport employees in Indianapolis go on strike, shutting down mass transit in the city and sparking riots when strikebreakers attempt to restart services.
• * The Lincoln Highway, the first automobile road across the United States, is dedicated.
• November 7–11 - The Great Lakes Storm of 1913 kills more than 250.
• November 26 - Phi Sigma Sigma, the first non-sectarian sorority, is founded at Hunter College in New York.
• December 1 - The Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line, reducing chassis assembly time from 12½ hours in October to 2 hours, 40 minutes.
• December 21 - Arthur Wynne's "word-cross", the first crossword puzzle, is published in the New York World.
• December 23 - The Federal Reserve is created by Woodrow Wilson.
• December 24 - Italian Hall disaster: 73 people are killed in a stampede at the Italian Hall in Calumet, Michigan during a party for over 400 miners and their families involved in the Copper Country strike of 1913–14.

  Undated

• The two cities of "Winston" and "Salem" in North Carolina; officially merge to become Winston-Salem.
• Portuguese emigration to the Hawaiian Islands ends.
• The National Temperance Council is founded to promote the temperance movement.
• R. J. Reynolds introduces Camel, the first packaged cigarette.
• First Erector Set construction toy marketed.
• Louis Armstrong begins playing the cornet, in the band of the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs.

  Ongoing

• Progressive Era
• Lochner era

  Births

• January 1 - Norman Rosten, poet, playwright and novelist
• January 6 - Loretta Young, actress
• January 9 - Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States from 1969 to 1974, 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961
• January 15 - Lloyd Bridges, film and television actor
• January 29 - Victor Mature, film actor
• January 31 - Murray Bowen, psychiatrist, pioneer of family therapy
• February 4 - Rosa Parks, African American Civil Rights activist
• February 13 - Pauline Ryba, Rosie the Riveter and Buffalo entrepreneur
• February 14 - Jimmy Hoffa, labor union leader
• February 27 - Irwin Shaw, playwright, screenwriter and novelist
• March 7 - Gordon Willey, archaeologist
• March 31 - Etta Baker, Piedmont blues guitarist
• May 16 - Woody Herman, jazz clarinetist and bandleader
• June 11 - Vince Lombardi, American football coach
• June 18 - Sammy Cahn, songwriter
• July 7 - Pinetop Perkins, African American blues pianist
• July 14 - Gerald Ford, 38th President of the United States from 1974 to 1977, 40th Vice President of the United States from 1973 to 1974
• August 9 - Herman Talmadge, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1957 to 1981
• August 17 - W. Mark Felt, FBI agent also known as "Deep Throat" from Watergate scandal
• August 20 - Roger Wolcott Sperry, neuropsychologist and neurobiologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1981
• August 31 - Helen Levitt, photographer
• September 11 - Bear Bryant, American football coach
• September 12 - Jesse Owens, athlete
• November 2 - Burt Lancaster, film actor
• November 8 - Max Desfor, news photographer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in 1951
• November 14 - George Smathers, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1951 to 1969
• December 21 - Arnold Friberg, painter and illustrator
• December 25 - Tony Martin, actor and singer

  Deaths

• January 16 - Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, aeronaut, scientist and inventor
• January 30 - James Henderson Berry, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1885 to 1907
• February 13 - Charles Major, novelist
• February 17 - Joaquin Miller, "Poet of the Sierras"
• March 10 - Harriet Tubman, African-American abolitionist, humanitarian and Civil War Union spy
• March 11 - John Shaw Billings, military and medical leader
• March 31 - J. P. Morgan, financier and banker
• May 1 - John Barclay Armstrong, Texas Ranger and U.S. Marshal
• May 8 - Frank O. Briggs, U.S. Senator from New Jersey from 1907 to 1913
• June 1 - Thomas W. Palmer, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1883 to 1889
• June 5 - Chris von der Ahe, brewer and baseball owner
• June 19 - Thomas M. Norwood, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1871 to 1877
• July 3 - Horatio Nelson Young, Civil War Union naval hero
• July 13 - Edward Burd Grubb, Jr., Civil War Union Brevet Brigadier General
• August 3
• * Alpheus Michael Bowman, politician and businessman
• * Josephine Cochrane, inventor of the first commercially successful dishwasher
• August 7 - Samuel Franklin Cody, aviation pioneer, dies in aircraft accident in England
• August 8 - Joseph F. Johnston, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1907 to 1913
• August 12 - U. M. Rose, Arkansas lawyer
• September 3 - John Martin, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1893 to 1895
• October 16 - Ralph Rose, field athlete
• October 24 - Cornelia Cole Fairbanks, Second Lady of the United States
• November 20 - Helen Appo Cook, African American community activist
• November 28 - George B. Post, architect
• December 7 - Aaron Montgomery Ward, businessman, inventor of mail order
• December 19 - Gustav Oelwein, founder of Oelwein, Iowa
• December 25 - Letitia Stevenson, Second Lady of the United States
• December 26 - Ambrose Bierce, writer and journalist, lost after this date in Mexican Revolution