Today in History...December 13

On this day in …

* 1577, Sir Francis Drake of England set out with five ships on a nearly three-year journey that would take him around the world

* 1918, President Wilson arrived in France, becoming the first chief executive to visit Europe while in office

* 1944, during World War II, the U.S. cruiser Nashville was badly damaged in a Japanese kamikaze attack that claimed more than 130 lives

* 1964, in El Paso, Texas, President Johnson and Mexican President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz set off an explosion that diverted the Rio Grande, reshaping the U.S.-Mexican border and ending a century-old dispute

* 1978, the Philadelphia Mint began stamping the Susan B. Anthony dollar, which went into circulation the following July

* 1981, authorities in Poland imposed martial law in a crackdown on the Solidarity labor movement. (Martial law formally ended in 1983.)

* 1995, as President Clinton flew to Paris to attend the signing of the Bosnian peace accord, Congress gave him partial backing for his Bosnia policy. ALSO: China's most influential democracy activist, Wei Jingsheng, who already had spent 16 years in prison, was sentenced to 14 more years. (However, Wei was later granted medical parole by Beijing, and allowed to travel to the U.S.)

* 2003, Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces while hiding in a hole under a farmhouse in Adwar, Iraq, near his hometown of Tikrit

* 2004, Redwood City, Calif. jury recommended the death penalty for Scott Peterson for the murders of his wife and unborn child. ALSO:
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe resigned. A Chilean judge indicted former dictator General Augusto Pinochet on charges of kidnapping nine political dissidents and killing one of them during his 17-year military regime