April 10 is the 100th day of the year (101st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Friday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Wednesday or Thursday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Monday or Saturday (56). There are 265 days remaining until the end of the year.
Holidays
Christian feast day:
- Fulbert of Chartres
- James, Azadanus and Abdicius
- Mikael Agricola (Lutheran)
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Episcopal Church)
- William of Ockham (Anglicanism)
- William Law (Anglicanism)
- April 10 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Day of the Builder (Azerbaijan)
Feast of the Third Day of the Writing of the Book of the Law (Thelema)
Siblings Day (International observance)
History
In 428, Nestorius becomes Patriarch of Constantinople.
In 837, Halley’s Comet and Earth experienced their closest approach to one another when their separating distance equalled 0.0342 AU (3.2 million miles).
In 879, Louis III and Carloman II become joint Kings of the Western Franks.
In 1407, The lama Deshin Shekpa visits the Ming Dynasty capital at Nanjing. He is awarded the title “Great Treasure Prince of Dharma”.
In 1500, Ludovico Sforza is captured by the Swiss troops at Novara and is handed over to the French.
In 1606, The Virginia Company of London is established by royal charter by James I of England with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America.
In 1710, The Statute of Anne, the first law regulating copyright, enters into force in Great Britain.
In 1741, War of the Austrian Succession: Prussia defeats Austria in the Battle of Mollwitz.
In 1790, The U.S. Patent system was established.
In 1806, Horatio Gates, English-American general (b. 1727) died. He was a retired British soldier who served as an American general during the Revolutionary War. He took credit for the American victory in the Battles of Saratoga (1777) — a matter of contemporary and historical controversy — and was blamed for the defeat at the Battle of Camden (1780). Gates has been described as “one of the Revolution’s most controversial military figures” because of his role in the Conway Cabal (which attempted to discredit and replace George Washington); the battle at Saratoga; and his actions during and after his defeat at Camden. During the French and Indian War, Gates served General Edward Braddock in America. In 1755 he accompanied the ill-fated Braddock Expedition in its attempt to control access to the Ohio Valley. This force included other future Revolutionary War leaders such as Thomas Gage, Charles Lee, Daniel Morgan, and George Washington. Gates did not see significant combat, since he was severely injured early in the action. His experience in the early years of the war was limited to commanding small companies, but he apparently became quite good at military administration. In 1759 he was made brigade major to Brigadier General John Stanwix, a position he continued when General Robert Monckton took over Stanwix’s command in 1760. Gates served under Monckton in the capture of Martinique in 1762, although he saw little combat. Monckton bestowed on him the honour of bringing news of the success to England, which brought him a promotion to major. The end of the war also brought an end to Gates’ prospects for advancement, as the army was demobilised and he did not have the financial wherewithal to purchase commissions for higher ranks. Frustrated by the British class hierarchy, he sold his major’s commission in 1769, and came to North America. In 1772 he reestablished contact with George Washington, and purchased a modest plantation in Virginia the following year. When the word reached Gates of the outbreak of war in late May 1775, he rushed to Mount Vernon and offered his services to Washington. In June, the Continental Congress began organizing the Continental Army. In accepting command, Washington urged the appointment of Gates as adjutant of the army. On June 17, 1775, Congress commissioned Gates as a Brigadier General and Adjutant General of the Continental Army. He is considered to be the first Adjutant General of the United States Army. Gates’s previous wartime service in administrative posts was invaluable to the fledgling army, as he and Charles Lee were the only men with significant experience in the British regular army. As adjutant, Horatio Gates created the army’s system of records and orders and helped standardize regiments from the various colonies. During the siege of Boston, he was a voice of caution, speaking in war councils against what he saw as overly risky actions.
In 1809, Napoleonic Wars: The War of the Fifth Coalition begins when forces of the Austrian Empire invade Bavaria.
In 1815, The Mount Tambora volcano begins a three-month-long eruption, lasting until July 15. The eruption ultimately kills 71,000 people and affects Earth’s climate for the next two years.
In 1816, The Federal government of the United States approves the creation of the Second Bank of the United States.
In 1821, Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople is hanged by the Ottoman government from the main gate of the Patriarchate and his body is thrown into the Bosphorus.
In 1826, The 10,500 inhabitants of the Greek town Missolonghi start leaving the town after a year’s siege by Turkish forces. Very few of them survive.
In 1841, The New York “Tribune” begins publication under editor Horace Greeley, who has been referred to as the single greatest journalistic influence in America.
In 1856, The Theta Chi fraternity is founded at Norwich University in Vermont.
In 1858, After the original Big Ben, a 14.5 tonne bell for the Palace of Westminster had cracked during testing, it is recast into the current 13.76 tonne bell by Whitechapel Bell Foundry.
In 1864, Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg is proclaimed emperor of Mexico during the French intervention in Mexico.
In 1865, American Civil War: A day after his surrender to Union forces, Confederate General Robert E. Lee addresses his troops for the last time.
In 1866, The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is founded in New York City by Henry Bergh.
In 1868, At Arogee in Abyssinia, British and Indian forces defeat an army of Emperor Tewodros II. While 700 Ethiopians are killed and many more injured, only two British/Indian troops die.
In 1869, Congress increases the number of United States Supreme Court judges from seven to nine.
In 1874, The first Arbor Day is celebrated in Nebraska.
In 1887, On Easter Sunday, Pope Leo XIII authorizes the establishment of The Catholic University of America.
In 1904, British mystic Aleister Crowley transcribes the third and final chapter of The Book of the Law.
In 1912, The Titanic leaves port in Southampton, England for her only voyage.
In 1916, The Professional Golfers’ Association of America (PGA) is created in New York City.
In 1919, Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata is ambushed and shot dead by government forces in Morelos.
In 1925, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s Jazz Age evocation of empty materialism, shattered illusion and failed romance, was first published in New York City, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
In 1941, World War II: The Axis powers in Europe establish the Independent State of Croatia from occupied Yugoslavia with Ante Pavelić‘s Ustaše fascist insurgents in power.
In 1944, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler escape from the Birkenau death camp.
In 1945, Members of the U.S. 80th Division entered the Buchenwald concentration camp north of Weimar, Germany. It was the first of the Nazi concentration camps to be liberated by Allied troops. Buchenwald had been established in 1937 and an estimated 56,000 people died there.
In 1953, Warner Bros. premieres the first 3-D film from a major American studio, entitled House of Wax.
In 1957, The Suez Canal is reopened for all shipping after being closed for three months.
In 1959, Akihito, future Emperor of Japan, marries Michiko.
In 1961, Adolf Eichmann, the former Nazi, was put on trial as a war criminal in an Israeli court in Jerusalem.
In 1963, 129 American sailors die when the submarine USS Thresher sinks at sea.
In 1968, Shipwreck of the New Zealand inter-island ferry TEV Wahine at the mouth of Wellington Harbour.
In 1970, Paul McCartney announces that he is leaving The Beatles for personal and professional reasons.
In 1971, Ping-pong diplomacy: In an attempt to thaw relations with the United States, the People’s Republic of China hosts the U.S. table tennis team for a week-long visit.
In 1972, 20 days after he is kidnapped in Buenos Aires, Oberdan Sallustro is murdered by communist guerrillas.
In 1972, Tombs containing bamboo slips, among them Sun Tzu‘s Art of War and Sun Bin‘s lost military treatise, are accidentally discovered by construction workers in Shandong.
In 1972, Vietnam War: For the first time since November 1967, American B-52 bombers reportedly begin bombing North Vietnam.
In 1972, Seventy-four nations sign the Biological Weapons Convention, the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the production of biological weapons.
In 1973, A British Vickers Vanguard turboprop aircraft crashed in a snowstorm at Basel, Switzerland killing 104 people.
In 1974, Golda Meir announced her resignation as prime minister of Israel. Yitzhak Rabin replaced her.
In 1976, The first Volkswagen made in America rolls off an assembly line in Pennsylvania. The German manufacturer leads a wave of international automakers opening American plants.
In 1979, Red River Valley tornado outbreak: A tornado lands in Wichita Falls, Texas killing 42 people.
In 1979, The Fall of Kampala was a battle during the Uganda–Tanzania War in April 1979, in which the combined forces of Tanzania and the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) attacked and captured the Ugandan capital, Kampala. Tanzanian forces were repulsing an invasion launched by Ugandan President Idi Amin (pictured). After routing the Ugandans and their Libyan allies in Entebbe, the Tanzanians moved on Kampala. They entered the city with UNLF forces on 10 April, facing minimal resistance but hampered by their lack of maps. The fall of the city was announced the next day. The Tanzanians cleared out the remaining pockets of opposition, while jubilant civilians celebrated through indiscriminate, destructive looting. Amin was deposed, his forces were scattered, and a new government was installed. The battle marked the first time in the modern history of the continent that an African state seized the capital of another African country and deposed its government.
In 1988, The Ojhri Camp disaster: Killing more than 1,000 people in Rawalpindi and Islamabad as a result of rockets and other munitions expelled by the blast.
In 1989, H. J. Heinz, Van Camp Seafood and Bumble Bee Seafood announce they will no longer buy tuna that had been caught in nets that also trapped dolphins.
In 1991, Italian ferry MS Moby Prince collides with an oil tanker in dense fog off Livorno, Italy killing 140.
In 1991, A rare tropical storm develops in the South Atlantic Ocean near Angola; the first to be documented by satellites.
In 1997, Onetime fighter pilot and former P.O.W. Pete Peterson was confirmed by the Senate as the first postwar U.S. ambassador to Vietnam.
In 1998, Northern Ireland peace deal reached (Good Friday Agreement).
In 2009, President of Fiji Ratu Josefa Iloilo announces he will suspend the constitution and assume all governance in the country, creating a constitutional crisis.
In 2010, Polish Air Force Tu-154M crashes near Smolensk, Russia, killing 96 people, including Polish President Lech Kaczyński and dozens of other senior officials
In 2010, Dixie Carter, American actress (b. 1939) dies. She was an American film, television and stage actress, best known for her role as Julia Sugarbaker in the CBS sitcom Designing Women (1986–1993). She is also known for her roles as Randi King on the CBS legal drama Family Law (1999–2002), Assistant District Attorney, Brandy Henderson on the CBS soap The Edge of Night (1974–1976), and as Gloria Hodge on the ABC series Desperate Housewives (2006–2007). Carter was born in McLemoresville, Tennessee, and spent many of her early years in Memphis. She attended college at the University of Memphis and Rhodes College. In college, she was a member of the Delta Delta Delta sorority. In 1959, Carter competed in the Miss Tennessee pageant, where she placed first runner-up to Mickie Weyland. Ms. Carter won the Miss Volunteer beauty pageant at the University of Tennessee in the same year. Carter was a registered Republican who described her political views as libertarian. She was interviewed by Bill O’Reilly along with Pat Boone at the 2000 Republican National Convention. Although her Designing Women character, Julia Sugarbaker, was known for her liberal political views and subsequent monologues, Carter disagreed with many of her character’s left-of-center commentaries and made a deal with the producers that for every speech she had to make with which she disagreed, Julia would get to sing a song in a future episode. Carter once jokingly described herself as “the only Republican in show business”.
In 2016, Sometimes, you almost have to admire liberals for their creativity in finding racism. In one of the best examples yet, student protesters at Lebanon Valley College, in Pennsylvania, demanded that administrators change the name of “Lynch Memorial Hall” because the word lynch carries racial connotations.
In 2016, The Paravur temple accident in which a devastating fire caused by the explosion of firecrackers stored for Vishu, kills more than one hundred people out of the thousands gathered for seventh day of Bhadrakali worship.
In 2016, An earthquake, of 6.6 magnitude, strikes 39 km west-southwest of Ashkasham, shakes up India, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Srinagar and Pakistan.
In 2019, Scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope project announce the first ever image of a black hole, located in the centre of the M87 galaxy.