On this day - December 10
2009-12-10 07:22
Today is Thursday, December 10, the 344th day of 2009. There are 21 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1520 - Martin Luther publicly burns the papal edict demanding that he recant or face excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.
1719 - The first recorded sighting of the Aurora Borealis takes place in New England.
1810 - Napoleon Bonaparte annexes northern Hanover, Bremen, Hamburg, Lauenburg and Lubeck, Germany.
1898 - The Treaty of Paris between United States and Spain ends the Spanish-American War with Spain ceding Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to the United States for $20m.
1899 - British forces are defeated by the Boers at Stromberg, South Africa.
1906 - US President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for helping mediate an end to the Russo-Japanese War.
1931 - Jane Addams becomes a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the first American woman so honoured.
1936 - King Edward VIII of Britain abdicates with the intention of marrying American divorcee Wallis Simpson. His brother, the Duke of York, becomes King George VI.
1948 - UN General Assembly in Paris unanimously adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Six members of the Soviet bloc, Saudi Arabia and South Africa abstain.
1950 - UN Mideast peace mediator Ralph J Bunche is presented the Nobel Peace Prize, the first black American to receive the award.
1958 - The first domestic passenger jet flight takes place in the United States as a National Airlines Boeing 707 flies 111 passengers from New York City to Miami.
1963 - Zanzibar becomes independent within the Commonwealth.
1964 - Dr Martin Luther King Jr receives the Nobel Peace Prize.
1967 - World's first commercial thermonuclear blast take place in the US state of New Mexico, to give access to natural gas from underground deposits.
1973 - Austria closes its transit centre for Jews leaving the Soviet Union.
1976 - In Lebanon, a truce accord ends fighting between Muslims and Christians in the south, clashes among Palestinian factions, heightened tensions among rival Christian parties and a Syrian crackdown against the Lebanese press.
1980 - Milton Obote is sworn in as Uganda's president, becoming the first African president ousted in a military coup to recapture the presidency. He was ousted by the army for the second time in 1985.
1983 - Democracy returns after seven years of dictatorship in Argentina, as Raul Alfonsin is sworn in as president.
1988 - Chinese troops shoot into crowds of Tibetans demonstrating in Lhasa for human rights.
1991 - Yugoslav federal army pulls out of Zagreb, and Croatia and Serbia exchange hundreds of prisoners, but fighting continues elsewhere in Croatia.
1992 - Troops open fire on a truckload of Somalis who barrel through a French checkpoint, killing two and injuring seven in the first bloodshed of the U.S.-led military mission in Somalia.
1993 - African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela says he and President FW de Klerk are bound by the Nobel Peace Prize they accepted to spend the rest of their lives building a democratic, non-racial South Africa.
1994 - Leaders of the Western Hemisphere's 34 democracies pledge to negotiate the world's largest duty-free trade zone by 2005.
1996 - South African President Nelson Mandela signs a constitution guaranteeing equal rights to all races.
1997 - Palestinians begin their first census in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and are attacked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for violating Israeli sovereignty in East Jerusalem.
2001 - US authorities charge a California bus company with illegally transporting tens of thousands of undocumented aliens smuggled across the US-Mexico border.
2006 - Hundreds of thousands of Hezbollah members and their allies flood central Beirut, demanding changes in the Lebanese government's makeup as soldiers strengthen protection around the offices of the Western-backed premier.
2007 - Cristina Fernandez is sworn in as Argentina's first elected female president.
2008 - Britain's obsession with reality television reaches new heights with the broadcast of the assisted suicide of a 59-year-old terminally ill American at a Swiss clinic.
Today's Birthdays:
Ada King Lovelace, English mathematician and world's first computer programmer (1815-1852); Cesar Franck, Belgian composer (1822-1890); Emily Dickinson, US poet (1830-1886); Melvil Dewey, US librarian/inventor of the Dewey Decimal System (1851-1931); Mary Norton, English children's author (1903-1992); Susan Dey, US actress (1952--); Kenneth Branagh, British actor (1960--).
Thought For Today:
I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing - Oscar Wilde, Irish poet, dramatist, author (1856-1900).
Sapa-AP