On This Day: January 13th

Octavian transfers the state to the free disposal of the Roman Senate and the people. He receives Spain, Gaul, and Syria as his province for ten years.

The steamship Lexington burns and sinks four miles off the coast of Long Island with the loss of 139 lives.

United States President Andrew Jackson writes to Vice President elect Martin Van Buren expressing his opposition to South Carolina's defiance of federal authority in the Nullification Crisis.

The design of the Greek flag is adopted by the First National Assembly at Epidaurus.

War of 1812: British troops capture Fort Peter in St. Marys, Georgia, the only battle of the war to take place in the state.

French Revolutionary Wars: A naval battle between a French ship of the line and two British frigates off the coast of Brittany ends with the French vessel running aground, resulting in over 900 deaths.

Nicolas Jean Hugon de Bassville, representative of Revolutionary France, is lynched by a mob in Rome.

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, is sentenced to death for treason, on the grounds of having quartered his arms to make them similar to those of the King, Henry VIII of England.

Sicut Dudum, forbidding the enslavement by the Spanish of the Guanche natives in Canary Islands who had converted, or were converting to, Christianity, is promulgated by Pope Eugene IV.

The Nika riots break out, during the racing season at the Hippodrome in Constantinople, as a result of discontent with the rule of the Emperor Justinian I.