On this day - November 10
2011-11-10 08:09
Today is Thursday, November 10, the 314th day of 2011. There are 51 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1444 - Turks annihilate a Hungarian force at the Battle of Varna - now in Bulgaria - ending the European powers' efforts to save Constantinople from Turkish conquest.
1729 - Portugal loses Mombassa to the Muscat Arabs.
1871 - American journalist Henry Stanley finds African explorer Dr David Livingstone in Ujiji, central Africa, on Lake Tanganyika; delivers his famous greeting "Dr Livingstone I presume?"
1885 - The son of German engineer Otto Daimler becomes the first motorcyclist, riding his father's invention 10km.
1928 - Hirohito is enthroned as Emperor of Japan.
1937 - President Getulio Vargas of Brazil cancels elections and decrees the Estado Novo dictatorship.
1938 - Anti-Semitic legislation is adopted in Italy.
1945 - Western powers recognise Communist-dominated Albanian government.
1954 - The Iwo Jima Memorial is dedicated in Arlington, Virginia. The battle for Iwo Jima in Japan during World War II resulted in the deaths of 21 000 Japanese and 6 800 American soldiers.
1963 - A cholera epidemic in India and Pakistan kills more than 1 500 people in a few weeks.
1969 - The children's educational programme Sesame Street makes its debut on PBS television in the United States.
1970 - The Soviet Union launches Luna 17, which lands a roving vehicle on the Moon's surface.
1975 - Angola becomes independent of Portugal in the midst of a civil war; the UN General Assembly approves a resolution equating Zionism with racism. The resolution is repealed in 1991.
1976 - Syrian troops and tanks enter Beirut, Lebanon, without resistance under agreement for multinational Arab peacekeeping force.
1980 - East German President Erich Honecker makes his first state visit to a western country - Austria.
1982 - The newly finished Vietnam Veterans Memorial opens in Washington, DC.
1987 - Niger's President Seyni Kountche dies in Paris, and is replaced as head of state by army chief Ali Seibou.
1988 - Soldiers open fire and kill at least 15 people in Sri Lanka when anti-government demonstrators defy a curfew.
1989 - Todor Zhivkov resigns after 35 years as Communist Party leader of Bulgaria.
1990 - Chandra Shekhar is sworn in as prime minister of India; Shi'ite Muslim militias begin 10-day pullout from Beirut.
1991 - Street fighting rages between Serbs and Croats struggling for control of Danube River town of Vukovar.
1992 - UN weapons inspectors in Baghdad remove 200 drums containing uranium from an Iraqi atomic facility.
1994 - Chandrika Kumaratunga, daughter of two prime ministers, wins presidential election in Sri Lanka; Iraq formally recognises Kuwait as sovereign state.
1995 - Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1998 - A jury in New York City convicts Corey Arthur, 20, of second-degree murder in the 1997 torture and murder of Jonathan Levin, his former high-school English teacher. Levin was the son of Gerald Levin, the chairperson of Time Warner Inc.
2000 - Philippine President Joseph Estrada denies new corruption allegations that he received a $20m kickback from the sale of the country's largest telephone company and pocketed more than $16m from a controversial stock sale.
2004 - Chile makes a step toward confronting its grim legacy of human rights abuses under the 1973-90 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet by completing a lengthy report on torture and political imprisonment with testimonies from at least 35 000 victims.
2005 - Thousands of Jordanians rally in their capital and other cities, denouncing the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a day after three deadly hotel bombings kill at least 57 people. Al-Qaeda's Iraq branch claims responsibility for the attacks.
2006 - Zimbabwe's government launches a programme to issue 99-year leases to black farmers allocated land seized mostly from white farmers.
2007 - Six US troops are killed when insurgents ambush their foot patrol in the high mountains of eastern Afghanistan - the most lethal attack against American forces of the year, making 2007 the deadliest year for US troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.
2008 - Railway and mass transit workers in Italy stage a strike, creating chaos for commuters, while a wildcat protest by some of Alitalia's staff forces the national airline to scrap dozens of flights.
Today's Birthdays:
Martin Luther, German leader of the Reformation (1483-1546); Francois Couperin, French composer (1668-1733); Friedrich von Schiller, German author (1759-1805); Oliver Goldsmith, Irish author (1728-1774); Richard Burton, British actor (1925-1984); Mackenzie Phillips, US actress (1959--); Brittany Murphy, US actress (1977--); Sinbad, US actor/comedian (1956--).
Thought For Today:
A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man - William Hazlitt, British essayist (1778-1830).
Sapa-AP