Talk:August 13

Selected anniversaries for the "On this day" section of the Main Page

Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before editing this box.

August 13 Soldier of the Coldstream Guards 1650 – General George Monck founded the predecessor to the Coldstream Guards (soldier pictured), the oldest regular regiment of the British Army in continuous active service. 1868 – A major earthquake near Arica, Peru (now in Chile), caused an estimated 25,000 casualties; the subsequent tsunami caused considerable damage as far away as Hawaii and New Zealand. 1876 – The first Bayreuth Festival, created by Richard Wagner and his wife Cosima to showcase his stage works, was opened with Das Rheingold. 1906 – Members of the U.S. Army's all-black 25th Infantry Regiment were accused of killing a white bartender and wounding a white police officer in Brownsville, Texas, despite exculpatory evidence. 2010 – After being boarded by Canadian authorities, MV Sun Sea docked in British Columbia and the 492 Sri Lankan Tamil refugee claimants on board were placed into detention. al-Muktafi (d. 908) Gerard David (d. 1523) Marjorie Paxson (b. 1923) Yana Kasova (b. 1981) More anniversaries: August 12 August 13 August 14

Link suggestions

An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the August_13 article, and they have been placed on this page for your convenience.
Tip: Some people find it helpful if these suggestions are shown on this talk page, rather than on another page. To do this, just add {{User:LinkBot/suggestions/August_13}} to this page. — LinkBot 00:58, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Holidays and observances

The reference to August 13 in Brazil under "Holidays and observances" seems to have "Friday" hardcoded into it. This August 13 was a Monday. Is there something about this Brazilian observance that is related to the day-of-week? If not, perhaps it should be omitted. Blueguy76 16:31, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

1975 Grateful Dead concert

The reference to a Grateful Dead concert at Great American Music Hall has been deleted repeatedly based on the idea that it is not notable. The band in question concertized virtually year-round for 30 years, giving thousands of concerts and selling many millions of tickets in toto, and spawning a unique culture among their following on the concert tour. The August 13 concert in question is arguably their single most notable concert. This may not seem notable to some WP contributors who have no affiliation with this part of human culture, but then again there are countless contributions to these date pages that would not seem notable to people who have no knowledge of or connection to them. Jbening (talk) 00:19, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

You made the argument for exclusion of this event pretty well when you said that "this may not seem notable to some WP contributors who have no affiliation with this part of human culture". Events that are notable enough for inclusion should be considered notable by people who have no connection to or knowledge of the topic. This event is notable only to Dead Heads and has no impact beyond the history of the band. The event is not notable enough to have an article dedicated to it (One from the Vault doesn't count because that is an article about an album) so how can one expect that the event would rise to the level of global notability required for inclusion in a date page? -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 01:09, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I concur, and have therefore removed it. --CalendarWatcher (talk) 01:19, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I think you made the argument for inclusion by citing the One from the Vault page, which is in fact about the event in question insofar as it's about the documentary record. FWIW, neither the 1904, 1905, nor 1923 events on the August 13 page have articles devoted to them--just to name three at random. If I wanted to take the time, I'm sure I could find countless more. The 1904 lightning strike isn't even mentioned in the article on the Kirtland Temple. The 1905 Norway referendum isn't even noted in the article Referendum. The town of Gdynia has an article, but neither the Gdynia Seaport in particular nor the arrival of the first ship does. So the criterion you offer doesn't come close to being decisive.

This is symptomatic of what I think is a greater problem. Popular culture topics are legion in WP, and rightly so. But they are strikingly absent from the date pages. I suspect this is because the wikipedians who edit the date pages tend to be history wonks who consider such topics beneath the seriousness of a date page--hence the treatment of the 1975 Grateful Dead concert mention. Your idea that it has no notability beyond a narrow circle of Dead Heads is frankly laughable, and I hope I do not offend you personally in saying so. The band is treated of in 1466 (!) articles in WP (I did a phrase search)--many of which are specifically devoted to members, releases, spinoffs, etc. of the band. Yet I strongly doubt there is a single mention of an event in their history among the tens of thousands of events listed in the 366 date pages. This strikes me as disproportionate. And as someone who knows a fair amount about their history, I think that the August 13 concert is the single most notable date-related event involving them--hence my inclusion. If you check my contributions, you will see that they are not slanted towards the Grateful Dead nor even to popular culture in general. Jbening (talk) 01:31, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the events that you have pointed out. I'm sure you understand that the newest additions get attention first and the argument for inclusion of this event cannot be made by comparing it to other events. Things get missed. Popular culture topics don't tend to maintain their notability in the long term and therefore should not be included in a list of events that are supposed to be notable in the long term. There are thousands of festivals and concerts that someone might argue are impactful and deserve to be included. But the bottom line is that these types of events have a very limited impact and they are not important to a wide audience. The event might be interesting, and it might have been the most important event in the history of one particular group, but it didn't change the world as most people see it. It isn't reported annually in newscasts around the world. It won't be included in history textbooks. It just isn't notable. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 01:53, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

That is a beautiful statement of exactly the sort of systematic bias I'm talking about. Thanks for giving such a naked instance of it. The upshot of your approach is that the dates pages on wikipedia will be skewed against popular culture relative to the encyclopedia as a whole. I'm confident you're on the wrong track in this, but I despair of changing your POV. BTW, the event we're wrangling over is not an especially new inclusion in this list--having been added originally some weeks ago. This little tempest merely resulted from my re-adding it after it was removed without justification.Jbening (talk) 03:00, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Note also that if it's not notable enough to be placed here, it's not notable enough for 1975, either. --CalendarWatcher (talk) 04:17, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

That last comment is clearly nonsense, as there are scads of events noted on the 1975 page that don't show up on the corresponding month-and-date pages.Jbening (talk) 05:25, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps an acquaintance with this page would be helpful before attempting to advance that argument again. --CalendarWatcher (talk) 05:50, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

1905 Norway and 1923 Poland

I've just re-added two events that were removed simply because I pointed out that there were not WP articles on them. I never intended for them to be removed, as the former is indisputably an historical event and the latter arguably so. In fact, I think it's shameful that this date page has fewer than 30 events associated with it. The sort of old-school exclusionism reflected in earlier comments on this talk page is to blame, IMO. I wish people editing these dates pages would wake up to how different WP is content-wise from a traditional encyclopedia. Mufka's suggestion above that an event has to be included in history textbooks and be reported annually in newscasts in order to qualify for a date page is to my mind astonishingly out of step with the content of WP. If we actually adhered to anything like that, we'd have to remove about half of the events on this page--but please, please don't anyone do that just out of zealous exclusionism. Jbening (talk) 03:46, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

South Park

we should add on this page that the first south park episode, cartman gets an anal probe, should be added to this page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.64.214.211 (talk) 10:29, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

International Left-handers Day

this is a private initiative - should be deleted from here. --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 15:17, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

1650 – Coldstream Guards

Should be moved to this day from August 23. An admin moved it from Selected Anniversaries for August 23 to SA for August 13. --184.207.156.158 (talk) 01:24, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Birth and Death Date Conundrum

Playboy model Willy Rey is shown as being both born and died on August 13th. HOWEVER, the article itself says she was born on August 25th, 1949 and died on August 19th 1973. Either she was born and died on her birthdate 24 years apart, or she died six days short of her 24th birthday. Someone who has more knowledge on this needs to fix it!