Sunday · September 27, 2026
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American history, reported as it happened
Made for the 250th
19581776 Club

Caracas mob surrounds Nixon's car; Secret Service draws weapons as crowd tries to overturn the limousine

For twelve minutes, hundreds rock and pound the Vice President's vehicle; Nixon orders his agents to hold fire. Rose Mary Woods is cut by flying glass in a trailing car.

On May 13, 1958, a mob of several hundred demonstrators surrounded Vice President Richard Nixon's limousine as it crawled through the streets of Caracas, Venezuela, pounding the windows with fists and rocking the car in an attempt to overturn it. Nixon's Secret Service detail drew their weapons; Nixon ordered them to hold fire. The attack lasted twelve minutes and was later described as "the most violent attack ever perpetrated on a high American official while on foreign soil." Nixon's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, was cut by flying glass in a following car…

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More from May 13
1846

Congress declares war on Mexico; Polk tells the nation its blood was shed on its own soil

The vote formalizes three weeks of open conflict rooted in a disputed border, the annexation of Texas, and a decade of unresolved claims between two nations.
1985

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1780

256 settlers sign a constitution at French Lick; judges' pay set in animal skins

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19431776 Club
Operation Vulcan stretches from Longstop Hill to Hill 609, battering a quarter-million trapped Axis troops whose fuel lines are already cut.
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Read the full May 13 edition →Everything that happened on May 13 →
More from Cold War America
1953

Armistice ends the fighting in Korea; the peace that follows is only a truce

Two years of talks end in a tent at Panmunjom, but South Korea's own president will not put his name on it.
1974

Judiciary Committee votes 27 to 11: Nixon obstructed justice

Six Republicans join every Democrat on the panel, three days after the Supreme Court ordered the tapes handed over.
1965

Johnson orders U.S. troops in Vietnam raised from 75,000 to 125,000

The advisory war becomes an American war, on Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's recommendation.
1958

Eisenhower signs the Space Act; a civilian agency will run America's push into orbit

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