Forgive me for weighing in with my ignorance, but this is the internet. And, since this is the internet, there's someone who makes a living
compiling just these data. He will
also tell you that, counting hull-loss accidents of airliners resulting in fatalities, 2013 had six more accidents than 2012, 29 to be exact. That's still fewer than any other year after 1945 (and, given his definition of "airliner" as "a civilian-registered aircraft capable of carrying more than 14 passengers", there weren't many of them flying in 1945). As far as fatalities, 265 is the least of any year since 1945, and by a wide margin.
Of course, the Boeing data is better scientifically: it excludes intentional acts, and anything coming from Russia (which is why they won't give you the number of A/C departures before the CIS' entry into IATA, and, in general, why they exclude Soviet-built aircraft, for which systematic data are hard to come by).
Still, you get the idea. The absolute peak of fatal hull losses occurred in 1972, and the database is sobering reading: maintenance mistakes, crews getting behind the aircraft on approach, non-standard R/T practices, and lots and lots of CFIT. And that's just in the US. And they were flying far fewer aircraft back in '72. If that level of safety (and security) were maintained today, there'd be a fatal hull loss somewhere in the world every day, and one of three of them would be in the US.
Yet the Boeing data tells us, in terms of accidents per departure, 1965 was five times worse.