Today in History: Saturday, October 13, 2012
On Oct. 13, 1792, the cornerstone of the White House was laid during a ceremony in the District of Columbia.
1775 The Continental Congress ordered the construction of a naval fleet.
1843 The Jewish organization B'nai B'rith was founded in New York City.
1845 Texas ratified a state constitution.
1943 Italy declared war on Germany, its one-time Axis partner.
1960 Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy participated in the third televised debate of the presidential campaign, with Nixon in Hollywood, Calif., and Kennedy in New York.
1960 The World Series ended with a home run for the first time as Bill Mazeroski of the Pittsburgh Pirates hit a round-tripper in the ninth inning of Game 7 against the New York Yankees.
1962 "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" by Edward Albee opened on Broadway.
1981 Egyptians voted in a referendum to elect Vice President Hosni Mubarak the new president, one week after the assassination of Anwar Sadat.
1998 The NBA canceled the first two weeks of its regular season because of a lockout.
1999 The JonBenet Ramsey grand jury was dismissed after 13 months; prosecutors said there wasn't enough evidence to charge anyone in the 6-year-old's strangulation.
2005 British playwright Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize in literature.
2006 The United Nations General Assembly appointed South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon the next U.N. secretary-general.
2008 The Dow Jones industrial average soared 936.42 points – it's largest one-day increase – ending eight consecutive days of stock market declines.
2010 Rescuers in Chile pulled 33 men one by one to freedom 69 days after they were trapped in a collapsed mine a half-mile underground.