TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – FEB 10
1258 Hulagu, a Mongol leader, seizes Baghdad, bringing an end to the Abbasid caliphate.
1763 The Treaty of Paris ends the French-Indian War. France gives up all her territories in the New World except New Orleans and a few scattered islands.
1799 Napoleon Bonaparte leaves Cairo, Egypt, for Syria, at the head of 13,000 men.
1814 Napoleon personally directs lightning strikes against enemy columns advancing toward Paris, beginning with a victory over the Russians at Champaubert.
1837 Russian poet and novelist Alexander Pushkin was killed in a duel.
1846 Led by religious leader Brigham Young, the first Mormons begin a long westward exodus from Nauvoo, Il., to Utah.
1863 P.T. Barnum’s star midgets, Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren, are married.
1879 The electric arc light was used for the first time.
1897 “The New York Times” began printing “All the news that’s fit to print” on their front page.
1915 President Wilson blasts the British for using the U.S. flag on merchant ships to deceive the Germans.
1933 The singing telegram was introduced by the Postal Telegraph Company of New York City.
1941 Mail Route was created between Washington D.C., and Harrisonburg, Virginia, and the mail for this route was carried on buses which were built with facilities on board for sorting, handling, and dispatch of mail.
1955 Bell Aircraft displays a fixed-wing vertical takeoff plane.
1960 Adolph Coors, the beer brewer, is kidnapped in Golden, Colo.
1960 Jack Paar, the host of The Tonight Show had walked off the set on this day, in protest of censorship. NBC had started taping the show, and had begun editing out any segment that it determined was inappropriate for “live” television. NBC had cut out a joke about a “water closet” (bathroom), and afterwards Paar was so upset that he left the set and did not return to work for a month.
1962 Francis Gary Powers, a U.S. spy captured by the Soviet Union, is released Powers was exchanged for captured Soviet spy, Rudolf Ivanovich Abel.
1966 Protester David Miller is convicted of burning his draft card.
1967 The 25th Amendment was ratified, establishing presidential succession.
1986 The largest Mafia trial in history, with 474 defendants, opens in Palermo, Italy.
1992 Mike Tyson, a former boxing champion, was found guilty of raping Desiree Washington, a Miss Black America contestant.
1996 Deep Blue becomes the first computer to win a chess game against a reigning world champion
1996 The IRA plants a bomb that explodes in the Docklands area of London, One man is found dead and another person has been reported missing.
1997 The U.S. Army suspended its top-ranking enlisted soldier, Army Sgt. Major Gene McKinney following allegations of sexual misconduct. McKinney was convicted of obstruction of justice and acquitted of 18 counts alleging sexual harassment of six military women.
1998 A man became the first to be convicted of committing a hate crime in cyberspace. The college dropout had e-mailed threats to Asian students.
2003 Iraq concerned with growing reports of a US invasion agrees to allow U-2 surveillance flights to search for banned weapons. President George W. Bush brushed aside Iraqi concessions as too little, too late.
2005 North Korea publicly announced for the first time that it had nuclear arms. The country also rejected attempts to restart disarmament talks in the near future saying that it needed the weapons as protection against an increasingly hostile United States.
2007 The Russian President Vladimir Putin has criticized the United States for what he calls an ‘almost uncontained’ use of force around the world. He has said that Washington’s ‘very dangerous’ approach to global relations was fueling a nuclear arms race. He was attending a security summit in Munich
2009 The Senate has voted through the economic stimulus plan that is expected to cost about $838 billion, and will be the most expansive anti-recession effort by the United States government since World War II. The Democratic-controlled Senate voted 61-37 to approve the measure, with few Republicans opting to back it.
2009 Two satellites collide in space Both the U.S. satellite “Iridium 33” and the Russian “Kosmos 2251” were destroyed in the accident.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
