October 13

Claudius, who as a young man wrote lost histories of the Etruscans and Carthaginians and proposed new letters for the Latin alphabet, died in Rome on this day in 54 CE.

Sister Nivedita, educator and writer who devoted her life to India after becoming a disciple of Swami Vivekananda, died at Darjeeling on this day in 1911.

Bernard V. Bothmer, a leading scholar of ancient Egyptian sculpture and its later periods, was born on this day in 1912.

The long-lived Chinese Chan master Xuyun, a central figure in the revival of monastic Buddhism in China, died on 13 October 1959 at Zhenru Monastery on Mount Yunju.

John Henry Newman, the 19th-century theologian and Oxford Movement figure, was canonized by Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square.

On 13 October 1773 Charles Messier observed the faint object he catalogued as M51, later recognized as the Whirlpool Galaxy, the first galaxy in which spiral structure would be seen.