TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – FEB 10
1258 Hulagu, a Mongol leader, seizes Baghdad, bringing an end to the Abbasid caliphate
1355 The St. Scholastica’s Day riot breaks out in Oxford, England, leaving 62 scholars and perhaps 30 locals dead in two days.
1620 Supporters of Marie de Medici, the queen mother, who has been exiled to Blois, are defeated by the king’s troops at Ponts de Ce, France.
1676 Wampanoag Indians under King Philip kill all men in Lancaster Mass
1763 The Treaty of Paris ends the French-Indian War. Treaty of Paris signed, ending the French and Indian War. France ceded Canada and all its North American territories east of the Mississippi to Great Britain.
1799 Napoleon Bonaparte leaves Cairo, Egypt, for Syria, at the head of 13,000 men.
1846 Led by religious leader Brigham Young, the first Mormons begin a long westward exodus from Nauvoo, Il., to Utah.
1855 US citizenship laws amended; all children of US parents born abroad granted US citizenship
1863 1st US fire extinguisher patent granted to Alanson Crane, Virginia
1870 YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) forms (NYC)
1890 Around 11 million acres ceded to US by Sioux Indians, then opened for settlement
1897 NY Times begins using slogan “All the News That’s Fit to Print”
1904 Russia and Japan declare war on each other.
1906 British battleship HMS Dreadnought launches after only 100 days, renders all other capital ships obsolete with its revolutionary design
1915 US President Woodrow Wilson protests to Britain on the use of US flags on British merchant ships to deceive the Germans
1933 Delivery of 1st singing telegram (Postal Telegram Co NYC)
1954 Eisenhower warns against US intervention in Vietnam
1962 The Soviet Union exchanged captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Rudolph Abel, a Soviet spy held by the United States.
1967 The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The amendment required the appointment of a vice-president when that office became vacant and instituted new measures in the event of presidential disability.
1975 The Provisional Irish Republican Army agrees to a truce and ceasefire with the British government and the Northern Ireland Office; Seven “incident centres” are established in nationalist areas to monitor the ceasefire
1988 3-judge panel of 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco strikes down Army’s ban on homosexuals (later overturned by appeal)
1986 The largest Mafia trial in history, with 474 defendants, opens in Palermo, Italy.
1989 To gain deregulation WWF admits pro wrestling is an exhibition & not a sport, in a NJ court
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.
1997 O.J. Simpson jury reaches decision on $25M in punitive damages
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.
1998 Voters in Maine repeal a gay rights law passed in 1997 becoming the first U.S. state to abandon the law
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.
2019 Sexual abuse investigation into US Southern Baptist churches reveals 400 church members implicated with over 700 victims, according to The Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
