On this day - February 10
2010-02-10 07:32
Today is Wednesday, February 10, the 41st day of 2010. There are 324 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1763 - France cedes Canada and India to England as Treaty of Paris is signed, ending French and Indian War.
1811 - Russians take Belgrade and capture Turkish army.
1817 - Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia agree to first reduction of occupation forces in France.
1828 - Simon Bolivar, South American revolutionary, becomes ruler of Colombia.
1846 - British forces under Hugh Gough defeat Sikhs at Sobrahan, India.
1878 - By Convention of El Zanjou, ending Ten Years' War, Spain promises reforms in Cuba.
1879 - Bulgaria's first parliament opens in the town of Veliko Turnovo.
1933 - The first singing telegram is sung in the United States.
1939 - Japanese forces occupy Hainan Island, China.
1943 - Britain's Eighth Army reaches Tunisian border in World War II.
1961 - United States relinquishes rights to many defence bases in West Indies.
1962 - The Soviet Union exchanges captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Rudolph Ivanovich Abel, a Soviet spy held by the United States.
1964 - Royal Australian Navy destroyer Voyager sinks after collision with HMAS Melbourne off Jervis Bay; more than 80 die.
1969 - United States, Britain and France reject East German restrictions on travel to West Berlin, and remind Soviets of their responsibility to ensure free access.
1974 - Iraq claims that 70 Iranians were killed or wounded in border clash between Iraqi and Iranian troops.
1991 - Peruvian health ministry announces that at least 51 people have died of cholera in epidemic along that country's coast.
1993 - Six million people in Madagascar vote in elections that topple President Didier Ratsiraka after 17 years in office.
1994 - The worst of the Bosnian war is over for the battered city of Sarajevo, where a UN-brokered cease-fire goes into effect.
1995 - Mexican government troops raid the headquarters of the Zapatista rebels in the jungles of Chiapas state, but fail to catch leader Subcomandante Marcos.
1996 - A slab of mountainside crushes a highway tunnel, killing 20 people in vehicles on the Japanese island of Hokkaido.
1997 - Croats open fire on Muslims visiting a cemetery in the southern Bosnian city of Mostar, killing at least one and wounding 39 people.
1998 - Protestant leaders seek to exclude Sinn Fein from Northern Ireland peace talks after a killing blamed on Catholic guerrillas.
2000 - All 164 passengers held hostage on an Afghan airliner during a tense four-day journey across Central Asia and Europe, exit the plane in England.
2001 - Two dozen young anti-government demonstrators are injured and 100 arrested in clashes with riot police breaking up a Tehran rally. Incidents in Tehran and other cities come as Iran marks the 22nd anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
2002 - Israeli warplanes and helicopter gunships attack a Palestinian National Authority security compound and other targets in Gaza City, wounding more than 30 people.
2003 - French, German and Belgian representatives to Nato veto US-led plans to lend alliance assistance to Turkey, which sought help in preparing for a possible ballistic missile attack by Iraq, if the US launches a pre-emptive attack.
2004 - US-backed, anti-narcotics soldiers capture Nayibe Rojas, a female rebel commander who is believed to manage drug and financial operations for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, the nation's largest guerrilla group. The army said Rojas is suspected of sending more than 600 tons of cocaine to the United States and Europe since 1994.
2005 - North Korea boasts publicly for the first time that it has nuclear weapons and says it will stay away from disarmament talks, dramatically raising the stakes in the two-year-old nuclear dispute despite softened rhetoric from the United States aimed at luring the communist nation back to the negotiating table.
2006 - The United States suspends Australia's wheat-export monopoly from US government contracts and proposes an indefinite debarment for the monopoly's cheating on the UN Oil-for-Food programme in Iraq.
2007 - General David Petraeus takes command of US and multinational troops in Iraq, succeeding General George W Casey Jr.
2008 - A US Army sniper accused of killing an unarmed Iraqi civilian and planting evidence on his body to cover it up is found guilty on all charges.
2009 - US and Russian communication satellites collide in the first-ever crash of its kind in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds.
Today's Birthdays:
William Congreve, English dramatist (1670-1729); Boris Pasternak, Soviet writer (1890-1960); Leontyne Price, US soprano (1927--); Robert Wagner, US actor (1930--); Roberta Flack, US singer (1937--); Greg Norman, Australian golfer (1955--).
Thought For Today:
Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean - George Santayana, Spanish-born philosopher (1863-1952).
Sapa-AP