On Dec. 13, 2003, Saddam Hussein, the deposed Iraqi president, was captured by U.S. troops in a small underground hideout southeast of his hometown of Tikrit.
Dec. 13 On this date in history:
In 1642, Dutch navigator Abel Tasman discovered New Zealand.
In 1816, the United States’ first savings bank, the Provident Institution for Savings, opened in Boston.
In 1862, Union troops suffered a major defeat in the Civil War battle of Fredericksburg. An estimated 12,000 northern soldiers were killed or injured, about three times the toll suffered by Confederate forces.
In 1937, the Nanjing Massacre began, during which Japanese troops killed between 40,000 and 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers. The episode lasted six weeks as part of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
