May 13, 1981
Pope John Paul II was shot and wounded in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City.
The shooter was sentenced to life in prison.
On December 27, 1983, the Pope visited him in prison in Italy and pardoned him.
After serving 19 years of imprisonment in Italy, he was deported to Turkey.
Wait, not finished yet. Let's follow the Turkish young man (Mehmet Ali Ağca) back to his country.
After finishing another ten years of imprisonment in Turkey, the once fanatic young Mehmet converted to the Roman Catholic Church on May 13, 2007 (26 years after he shot the Pope), according to his own words.
On Jan 18, 2010, Agca was released from prison.
In 2014, he visited the tomb of John Paul II, the Pope he shot and wounded 33 years before.
If you are intrigued, you may want to read two novels about the assassination:
Red Rabbit, by Tom Clancy
The Fourth Protocol, by Fredrick Forsyth
Today is
National Frog Jumping Day
The tradition came to life from Mark Twain's first short story published in 1865, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”
May 13, 2001
R.K. Narayan (纳拉扬), the Indian writer, died at age 94.
Narayan's most outstanding achievement was making India accessible to the outside world through his literature.
In 2019, his book Swami and Friends was chosen as one of BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World (https://thegreatestbooks.org/lists/194).
Narayan was nominated for the Nobel Prize multiple times but never won the honor.