Today in History: March 13, Francis becomes first non-European pope in over 1,250 years

Today is Friday, March 13, the 72nd day of 2026. There are 293 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On March 13, 2013, Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope, choosing the papal name Francis. He was the first pontiff from the Americas, and the first from outside Europe since Pope Gregory III’s death in the year 741. Pope Francis died on April 21, 2025.

Also on this date:

In 1781, the seventh planet of the solar system, Uranus, was discovered by astronomer William Herschel.

In 1925, the Tennessee General Assembly approved the Butler Act, which prohibited public schools from teaching the theory of evolution. (Gov. Austin Peay signed the measure on March 21; the bill was challenged in court later that year in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. Tennessee ultimately repealed the law in 1967.)

In 1946, U.S. Army Pfc. Sadao Munemori was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for sacrificing himself to save fellow soldiers from a grenade explosion in Seravezza, Italy; he was the only Japanese American service member so recognized in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

In 1954, the pivotal Battle of Dien Bien Phu began during the First Indochina War as Viet Minh forces attacked French troops, who were defeated nearly two months later.

In 1996, a gunman entered an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and opened fire, killing 16 children and a teacher before killing himself; it remains the deadliest mass shooting in British history.

In 2020, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2020, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment during a botched raid by plainclothes narcotics...