May 13 belongs to Paula Calvó

On May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II was wounded by four gunshots by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Ağca in St Peter's Square in the Vatican. The Pope survived following a delicate operation. Years later, he visited Ağca in prison and publicly forgave him. The Pope always believed that the date — the anniversary of the first apparition of the Virgin of Fátima in 1917 — was not a coincidence.

On May 13, 1940, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands fled to London aboard a British destroyer following the German invasion four days earlier. From exile, Wilhelmina became the symbol of Dutch resistance, delivering radio speeches to her countrymen. Her daughter Juliana and grandchildren also went into exile. Wilhelmina returned to the Netherlands on May 2, 1945.

On May 13, 1969, the most serious racial riots in Malaysian history erupted in Kuala Lumpur, following general elections in which the Malay majority lost ground to parties representing the Chinese minority. The clashes left between 196 and several thousand dead depending on the source, and led to a reorganisation of the Malaysian political system to explicitly favour the bumiputra (indigenous Malay) population.