On this day: August 13
Disney brings an animated deer to movie screens, construction begins on the Berlin Wall, a Hall of Fame slugger dies and tragedy strikes the Indiana State Fair, all on this day.
1521: Tenochtitlán (present day Mexico City) and its leader Cuauhtémoc fall to conquistador Hernán Cortés after 80 days of continuous urban warfare against the Spanish. From 1521 to 1524, Cortés personally governed Mexico.
1521: Tenochtitlán (present day Mexico City) and its leader Cuauhtémoc fall to conquistador Hernán Cortés after 80 days of continuous urban warfare against the Spanish. From 1521 to 1524, Cortés personally governed Mexico.
1792: King Louis XVI of France is formally arrested by the National Tribunal, and declared an enemy of the people.
1868: A massive earthquake near Arica, then part of Peru, now part of Chile, kills an estimated 25,000, with the subsequent tsunami causing considerable damage as far away as Hawaii and New Zealand.
1898: Carl Gustav Witt discovers 433 Eros, the first near-Earth asteroid to be found. In 2000, the asteroid would become the first to be orbited by a probe when the NEAR Shoemaker probe took this photo.
1899: Film director Alfred Hitchcock, best known for movies such as "Psycho," "Rear Window" and "North by Northwest," is born in London, England.
1910: Florence Nightingale, the English nurse who helped lay the foundation of professional nursing, dies in London, England, at the age of 90.
1918: Women can enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps for the first time, with Opha Mae Johnson becoming the first of 305 women to enlist in the United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve that day.
1926: Fidel Castro, Cuban revolutionary and politician, is born in Birán, Cuba. He served as prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then president from 1976 to 2008.
1930: Don Ho, the Hawaiian and traditional pop musician and singer famous for his song "Tiny Bubbles," is born in Honolulu.
1934: Al Capp's comic strip "L'il Abner" makes its debut in newspapers. The strip, which featured a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished town of Dogpatch, Ky., would run for 43 years.
1942: Walt Disney's "Bambi" premieres at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. It would open wide on Aug. 21, 1942.
1946: Author H.G. Wells ("The Time Machine," "The War of the Worlds," "The Invisible Man") dies in London, England, at the age of 79.
1959: Actor Danny Bonaduce ("The Partridge Family") is born in Broomall, Pa.
1961: The German Democratic Republic closes the border between the eastern and western sectors of Berlin to thwart its inhabitants' attempts to escape to the West and begins building the Berlin Wall.
1965: The group Jefferson Airplane makes its first public appearance at the opening night of The Matrix music club in San Francisco.
1967: The movie "Bonnie and Clyde," starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway at the title characters, gangsters Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, debuts in theaters.
1969: The Apollo 11 astronauts are released from a three-week quarantine to enjoy a ticker-tape parade in New York. That evening, at a state dinner in Los Angeles, they are awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon.
1979: The roof of the uncompleted Rosemont Horizon (now known as the Allstate Arena) near Chicago collapses, killing five workers and injuring 16.
1979: Lou Brock of the St. Louis Cardinals becomes the 14th player in Major League Baseball history to get his 3,000th career hit as his line drive caroms off Dennis Lamp's pitching hand in the 3-2 Cardinal victory over the Cubs. He would collect 23 more before retiring at the end of the season.
1982: The teen comedy "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," starring Sean Penn (pictured), Phoebe Cates, Judge Reinhold, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Ray Walston, is released.
1995: Hall of Fame baseball player Mickey Mantle, who won seven World Series titles in his 18 years with the New York Yankees, dies from liver cancer at the age of 63 in Dallas, Texas.
2004: Hurricane Charley, a Category 4 storm, makes landfall near Punta Gorda, Fla., on the Gulf Coast. It devastates the surrounding area, causing more than $15 billion in damages and killing 10 people in the United States before dying out.
2004: Julia Child, American chef and TV personality, dies of kidney failure in Montecito, Calif., two days before her 92nd birthday.
2004: The 28th Summer Olympics opens in Athens, Greece.
2008: The movie "Tropic Thunder," starring Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black and Tom Cruise, opens in theaters.
2009: Musician and electric guitar pioneer Les Paul dies of complications from pneumonia in White Plains, N.Y., at the age of 94.
2011: The main stage collapses at the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis during a hurricane-force wind gust ahead of an approaching severe thunderstorm just before a Sugarland concert, killing seven and injuring 58.
