January 10 is the 10th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 355 days remaining until the end of the year (356 in leap years).
Holidays
- Christian Feast Day:
- Traditional Day (Benin)
- National Clean Off Your Desk Day
- National Cut Your Energy Costs Day
- Anniversary – Women’s Suffrage Amendment
- Coming-of-Age Day (Japan)
- Plough Monday (UK)
In 49 BC, Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon, signaling the start of civil war.
In AD 9, The Western Han Dynasty ends when Wang Mang claims that the divine Mandate of Heaven called for the end of the dynasty and the beginning of his own, the Xin Dynasty.
In AD 69, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Licinianus is appointed by Galba as deputy Roman Emperor.
In 236, Pope Fabian succeeds Anterus to become the twentieth pope of Rome.
In 1072, Robert Guiscard conquers Palermo.
In 1430, Philip the Good, the Duke of Burgundy, establishes the Order of the Golden Fleece, the most prestigious, exclusive, and expensive order of chivalry in the world
In 1475, Stephen III of Moldavia defeats the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Vaslui.
In 1645, Archbishop William Laud is beheaded at the Tower of London.
In 1654, Nicholas Culpeper, English botanist, physician, and astrologer (b. 1616) died. He was an English botanist, herbalist, physician, and astrologer. His published books include The English Physician (1652) and the Complete Herbal (1653), which contain a rich store of pharmaceutical and herbal knowledge, and Astrological Judgement of Diseases from the Decumbiture of the Sick (1655), which is one of the most detailed documents we have on the practice of medical astrology in Early Modern Europe. Culpeper spent the greater part of his life in the English outdoors cataloging hundreds of medicinal herbs. He criticized what he considered the unnatural methods of his contemporaries, writing: “This not being pleasing, and less profitable to me, I consulted with my two brothers, DR. REASON and DR. EXPERIENCE, and took a voyage to visit my mother NATURE, by whose advice, together with the help of Dr. DILIGENCE, I at last obtained my desire; and, being warned by MR. HONESTY, a stranger in our days, to publish it to the world, I have done it.” Culpeper came from a long line of notable people including Thomas Culpeper, the lover of Catherine Howard (also a distant relative) who was sentenced to death by Catherine’s husband, King Henry VIII.
In 1776, Thomas Paine publishes his pamphlet Common Sense.
In 1791, The Siege of Dunlap’s Station begins near Cincinnati during the Northwest Indian War.
In 1806, Dutch settlers in Cape Town surrender to the British.
In 1810, Napoleon Bonaparte divorces his first wife Joséphine.
In 1861, American Civil War: Florida secedes from the Union.
In 1862, Samuel Colt, American businessman; founded Colt’s Manufacturing Company (b. 1814) dies of gout in Hartford on January 10, 1862, and was buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery. At the time of his death, Colt’s estate, which he left to his wife and three-year-old son Caldwell Hart Colt, was estimated to be valued at around $15 million ($350 million by 2009 standards).
He was an American inventor and industrialist from Hartford, Connecticut. He founded Colt’s Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company (today, Colt’s Manufacturing Company), and made the mass production of the revolver commercially viable.
Colt’s first two business ventures — producing firearms in Paterson, New Jersey, and making underwater mines — ended in disappointment. But his business expanded rapidly after 1847, when the Texas Rangers ordered 1,000 revolvers during the American war with Mexico. During the American Civil War, his factory in Hartford supplied firearms both to the North and the South. Later, his firearms were prominent during the settling of the western frontier. Colt died in 1862 as one of the wealthiest men in America.
Colt’s manufacturing methods were at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. His use of interchangeable parts helped him become one of the first to exploit the assembly line. Moreover, his innovative use of art, celebrity endorsements and corporate gifts to promote his wares made him a pioneer in the fields of advertising, product placement and mass marketing.
In 1863, The London Underground, the world’s oldest underground railway, opens between London Paddington station and Farringdon station.
In 1870, John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil.
In 1883, Samuel Mudd, American physician (b. 1833) died. He was the American physician who was convicted and imprisoned for aiding and conspiring with John Wilkes Booth in the 1865 assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. He was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson and released from prison in 1869. Despite repeated attempts by family members and others to have it expunged, his conviction has never been overturned.
In 1901, The first great Texas oil gusher is discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas.
In 1916, World War I: In the Erzurum Offensive, Russia defeats the Ottoman Empire.
In 1917, Buffalo Bill, American soldier and hunter (b. 1846) died. William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody (February 26, 1846 – January 10, 1917) was an American soldier, bison hunter and showman. He was born in the Iowa Territory (now the U.S. state of Iowa), in Le Claire but lived several years in Canada before his family moved to the Kansas Territory. Buffalo Bill received the Medal of Honor in 1872 for service to the US Army as a scout. One of the most colorful figures of the American Old West, Buffalo Bill became famous for the shows he organized with cowboy themes, which he toured in Great Britain and Europe as well as the United States.
Presently the moon rose, dead ahead of me; and painted boldly across its face was the figure of an Indian. He wore this war-bonnet of the Sioux, at his shoulder was a rifle pointed at someone in the river-bottom 30 feet (9 m) below; in another second he would drop one of my friends. I raised my old muzzle-loader and fired. The figure collapsed, tumbled down the bank and landed with a splash in the water. ‘What is it?’ called McCarthy, as he hurried back. ‘It’s over there in the water.’ ‘Hi!’ he cried. ‘Little Billy’s killed an Indian all by himself!’ So began my career as an Indian fighter.
In 1920, The Treaty of Versailles takes effect, officially ending World War I.
In 1922, Arthur Griffith is elected President of the Dáil Éireann.
In 1923, Lithuania seizes and annexes Memel.
In 1927, Fritz Lang‘s futuristic film Metropolis is released in Germany.
In 1929, The Adventures of Tintin, one of the most popular European comic books, is first published in Belgium.
In 1941, World War II: The Greek army captures Kleisoura.
In 1946, The first General Assembly of the United Nations opens in London. Fifty-one nations are represented.
In 1946, The United States Army Signal Corps successfully conducts Project Diana, bouncing radio waves off the moon and receiving the reflected signals.
In 1954, BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland DH.106 Comet 1, explodes and falls into the Tyrrhenian Sea killing 35 people.
In 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.
In 1972, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returns to the newly independent Bangladesh as president after spending over nine months in prison in Pakistan.
In 1981, Salvadoran Civil War: The FMLN launches its first major offensive, gaining control of most of Morazán and Chalatenango departments
In 1981, Richard Boone, American actor (b. 1917) died. He was an American actor who starred in over 50 films and was notable for his roles in Westerns and for starring in the TV series Have Gun – Will Travel.
In 1984, The United States and Holy See (Vatican City) re-establish full diplomatic relations after almost 117 years, overturning Congress‘s 1867 ban on public funding for such a diplomatic envoy.
In 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.
In 1990, Time Warner is formed by the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications.
In 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.
In 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 Los Angeles and San Francisco for 10 days.
In 2007, A general strike begins in Guinea in an eventually successful attempt to get President Lansana Conté to resign.
In 2011, 2010–2011 Queensland floods: Torrential rain in the Lockyer Valley region of South East Queensland, Australia causes severe flash flooding, killing 9 people.
In 2011, Basque Euskadi ta Askatasuna calls for a permanent cease-fire.
In 2013, More than 100 people are killed and 270 injured in several bomb blasts in Pakistan.
In 2015, A mass poisoning at a funeral in Mozambique involves beer that was deliberately contaminated with crocodile bile leaving at least 56 dead and nearly 200 hospitalized.
In 2015, A traffic accident between an oil tanker truck and passenger coach en route to Shikarpur from Karachi on the Pakistan National Highway Link Road near Gulshan-e-Hadeed, Karachi, kills at least 62 people.
In 2016, David Bowie, (David Robert Jones) English singer-songwriter, producer, and actor (b. 1947) dies from liver cancer in his New York City apartment. He was an English singer, songwriter and actor. He was a leading figure in the music industry and is considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, acclaimed by critics and musicians, particularly for his innovative work during the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, with his music and stagecraft having a significant impact on popular music. During his lifetime, his record sales, estimated at 140 million albums worldwide, made him one of the world’s best-selling music artists. In the UK, he was awarded ten platinum album certifications, eleven gold and eight silver, and released eleven number-one albums. In the US, he received five platinum and nine gold certifications. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
In 2016, Freedom Partners released a 2016 Obamacare Premium Increase Tracker which shows the average health-care-premium increases in each state on the individual marketplace this year. Premiums on the individual marketplace increased in . . . 49 out of 50 states. You’re in luck, Mississippi! You’re down two-tenths of one percent! If Obama had run around the country in 2008, pledging, “I will raise the typical family’s premium by $4,865 by 2015!” do you still think it would have passed. Just a note, your city and muni-hospital care systems were all for it, too.
In 2019, Félix Tshisekedi was announced as the winner of 2018 Democratic Republic of the Congo presidential election, marking the end of Kabila family’s two-decades-long ruling.