January 10 - Events

Events

• 49 BC – Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon, signaling the start of civil war.
• 69 – Lucius Calpurnius Piso Licinianus is appointed by Galba to deputy Roman Emperor.
• 236 – Pope Fabian succeeds Anterus as the twentieth pope of Rome.
• 1072 – Robert Guiscard conquers Palermo.
• 1475 – Stephen III of Moldavia defeats the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Vaslui.
• 1645 – Archbishop William Laud is beheaded at the Tower of London.
• 1776 – Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense.
• 1806 – Dutch settlers in Cape Town surrender to the British.
• 1810 – Napoleon Bonaparte divorces his first wife Joséphine.
• 1861 – American Civil War: Florida secedes from the Union.
• 1863 – The London Underground, the world's oldest underground railway, opens between London Paddington station and Farringdon station.
• 1870 – John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil.
• 1901 – The first great Texas oil gusher is discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas.
• 1916 – Erzurum Offensive during World War I, Russian victory over Ottoman Empire.
• 1920 – The Treaty of Versailles takes effect, officially ending World War I.
• 1922 – Arthur Griffith is elected President of the Dáil Éireann.
• 1923 – Lithuania seizes and annexes Memel.
• 1927 – Fritz Lang's futuristic film Metropolis is released in Germany.
• 1929 – The Adventures of Tintin, one of the most popular European comic books ever, is first published in Belgium.
• 1941 – World War II: The Greek army captures Kleisoura.
• 1946 – The first General Assembly of the United Nations opens in London. Fifty-one nations are represented.
• 1946 – The United States Army Signal Corps successfully conducts Project Diana, bouncing radio waves off the moon and receiving the reflected signals.
• 1954 – BOAC Flight 781 A de Havilland DH.106 Comet 1 explodes into the Tyrrhenian Sea killing 35 people.
• 1962 – Apollo program: NASA announces plans to build the C-5 rocket launch vehicle. It became better known as the Saturn V Moon rocket, which launched every Apollo Moon mission.
• 1972 – Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returns to the newly independent Bangladesh as president after spending over nine months in prison in Pakistan.
• 1977 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in eastern Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
• 1977 – Ocean Park opens in Hong Kong.
• 1981 – Salvadoran Civil War: The FMLN launches its first major offensive, gaining control of most of Morazán and Chalatenango departments
• 1984 – The United States and Vatican City establish full diplomatic relations after 117 years.
• 1985 – Sandinista Daniel Ortega becomes president of Nicaragua and vows to continue the transformation to socialism and alliance with the Soviet Union and Cuba; American policy continues to support the Contras in their revolt against the Nicaraguan government.
• 1990 – Time Warner is formed from the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications.
• 1999 – Sanjeev Nanda kills three policemen in New Delhi, India with his car, an act for which he was later acquitted, resulting in a sharp drop in public confidence in the Indian legal system.
• 2005 – A mudslide occurs in La Conchita, California, killing 10 people, injuring many more and closing U.S. Route 101, the main coastal corridor between San Francisco and Los Angeles, for 10 days.
• 2007 – A general strike begins in Guinea in an eventually successful attempt to get President Lansana Conté to resign.
• 2011 – 2010–2011 Queensland floods: Torrential rain in the Lockyer Valley region of South East Queensland, Australia causes severe flash flooding, killing 9 people.