July 13 in Military History

Royalist cavalry under Lord Wilmot rout the Parliamentarian army at Roundway Down near Devizes, one of the most decisive cavalry victories of the English Civil War.

The largest civil insurrection in American history erupts in New York City as mobs protesting the Union draft attack government buildings, African Americans, and abolitionists in four days of violence that kills over 100 people.

Civil War conscription triggers four days of rioting in New York City, killing more than 100 people and forcing Lincoln to divert regiments fresh from Gettysburg to suppress the disorder.

The Treaty of Berlin reorganizes the Balkans after the Russo-Turkish War, redrawing borders across southeastern Europe in a settlement that sows the seeds of conflicts leading to World War I.

British and Commonwealth forces under General Auchinleck continue to hold Rommel's Afrika Korps at El Alamein, marking the farthest point of the German advance in North Africa and saving Egypt from capture.

British forces continue operations around Villers-Bocage in Normandy following Michael Wittmann's devastating ambush of the British 7th Armoured Division, demonstrating the lethality of German Tiger tanks in the hedgerow country.

A 25-hour blackout strikes New York City, prompting National Guard deployment, looting, and a detailed Department of Defense review of military support to civil authorities in an urban crisis.

NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers finalize the gravity-assist trajectory for Voyager 1 and 2 through the Jupiter system, a navigation plan that would later inform Navy deep-space tracking and communications research.

The Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia raise $127 million for Ethiopian famine relief, highlighting the humanitarian dimension of military conflicts in the Horn of Africa that had caused the crisis.

The Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia are broadcast simultaneously via satellite to an estimated 1.9 billion viewers, a transatlantic media event that showcased the satellite infrastructure the U.S. military had pioneered two decades earlier.