Today is Wednesday, Feb. 10, the 41st day of 2016. There are 325 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 delivered 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 defense 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 U.N.-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.
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.
2007 – Gen. David Petraeus takes command of U.S. and multinational troops in Iraq, succeeding Gen. George W. Casey Jr.
2009 – U.S. and Russian communication satellites collide in the first-ever crash of its kind in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds.
2010 – Iraq orders hundreds of private security guards linked to Blackwater Worldwide to leave the country within seven days or face possible arrest on visa violations.
2011 – Embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hands over power to his vice president, promising reforms including repeal of hated emergency laws, but his concession angers crowds in Cairo’s Tahrir Square who chant “get out.”
2012 – Greece’s future in the eurozone grows increasingly precarious as violence erupts on the streets of Athens and dissent increases among its lawmakers after European leaders demand deeper spending cuts.
2013 – Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford takers charge of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan as the coalition enters its final stretch of the more than 11-year-old war.
2014 – An instructor for the al-Qaida breakaway group in Iraq teaching his militant recruits how to make car bombs accidentally sets off explosives in his demonstration, killing 21 of them at a training camp north of Baghdad.
2015 – The United States is preparing to withdraw nearly all of its troops fighting the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, as the global health crisis recedes amid a decline in Ebola cases.
Today’s Birthdays
William Congreve, English dramatist (1670-1729); Boris Pasternak, Soviet writer (1890-1960); Leontyne Price, U.S. soprano (1927–); Robert Wagner, U.S. actor (1930–); Roberta Flack, U.S. 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).
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
