November 10th in History

November 10 is the 314th day of the year (315th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 51 days remaining until the end of the year. There are 44 days till Christmas.

Holidays

History

In 937,  Ten KingdomsLi Bian usurps the throne and deposes Emperor Yang Pu. The Wu State is replaced by Li (now called “Xu Zhigao”), who becomes the first ruler of Southern Tang.

In 1202Fourth Crusade: Despite letters from Pope Innocent III forbidding it and threatening excommunication, Catholic crusaders begin a siege of the Catholic city of Zara (now Zadar, Croatia).

In 1293,  Raden Wijaya is crowned as the first monarch of Majapahit kingdom of Java, taking throne name Kertarajasa Jayawardhana.

In 1444,  Battle of Varna: The crusading forces of King Vladislaus III of Varna (aka Ulaszlo I of Hungary and Wladyslaw III of Poland) are crushed by the Turks under Sultan Murad II and Vladislaus is killed.

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Martin Luther by Cranach-restoration

In 1483, The birth of Martin Luther, German monk and priest, leader of the Protestant Reformation (d. 1546)

In 1520,  Danish King Christian II executes dozens of people in the Stockholm Bloodbath after a successful invasion of Sweden.

In 1580,  After a three-day siege, the English Army beheads over 600 Papal soldiers and civilians at Dún an Óir, Ireland.

In 1619,  René Descartes has the dreams that inspire his Meditations on First Philosophy.

In 1659,  Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Maratha King kills Afzal Khan, Adilshahi in the battle popularly known as Battle of Pratapgarh. This is also recognised as the first defence of Swarajya

In 1674,  Anglo-Dutch War: As provided in the Treaty of Westminster, Netherlands cedes New Netherlands to England.

In 1702,  English colonists under the command of James Moore besiege Spanish St. Augustine during Queen Anne’s War.

In 1766,  The last colonial governor of New Jersey, William Franklin, signs the charter of Queen’s College (later renamed Rutgers University).

Emblem of the United States Marine Corps.svg

In 1775,  The United States Marine Corps is founded at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia by Samuel Nicholas. The Marines are a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting amphibious operations with the United States Navy. The U.S. Marine Corps is one of the four armed service branches in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States.

The Marine Corps has been a component of the U.S. Department of the Navy since 30 June 1834, working closely with naval forces. The USMC operates installations on land and aboard sea-going amphibious warfare ships around the world. Additionally, several of the Marines’ tactical aviation squadrons, primarily Marine Fighter Attack squadrons, are also embedded in Navy carrier air wings and operate from the aircraft carriers. The history of the Marine Corps began when two battalions of Continental Marines were formed on 10 November 1775 in Philadelphia as a service branch of infantry troops capable of fighting on both at sea and on shore. By the mid-20th century, the U.S. Marine Corps had become a major theorist of amphibious warfare, which were utilized in the Pacific theater of World War II. As of 2017, the USMC has around 185,000 active duty members and some 38,500 reserve Marines It is the smallest U.S. military service within the DoD.

Semper Fi

In 1793,  A Goddess of Reason is proclaimed by the French Convention at the suggestion of Chaumette.

In 1821,  Cry of Independence by Rufina Alfaro at La Villa de Los Santos, Panama setting into motion a revolt which lead to Panama’s independence from Spain and to it immediately becoming part of Colombia

In 1847,  The passenger ship Stephen Whitney is wrecked in thick fog off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 92 of the 110 on board. The disaster results in the construction of the Fastnet Rock lighthouse.

In 1865,  Major Henry Wirz, the superintendent of a prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, is hanged, becoming the only American Civil War soldier executed for war crimes.

In 1871,  Henry Morton Stanley locates missing explorer and missionary, Dr. David Livingstone in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika, famously greeting him with the words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”.

In 1898, Beginning of the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, the only instance of a municipal government being overthrown in US history.

In 1910,  The date of Thomas A. Davis‘ opening of the San Diego Army and Navy Academy, though the official founding date is November 23, 1910.

In 1918,  The Western Union Cable Office in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, receives a top-secret coded message from Europe (that would be sent to Ottawa, Ontario, and Washington, DC) that said on November 11, 1918, all fighting would cease on land, sea and in the air.

In 1919,  The first national convention of the American Legion is held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, ending on November 12.

In 1940,  The 1940 Vrancea earthquake strikes Romania killing an estimated 1,000 and injuring approximately 4,000 more.

In 1942,  World War II: Germany invades Vichy France following French Admiral François Darlan‘s agreement to an armistice with the Allies in North Africa.

In 1944,  The ammunition ship USS Mount Hood explodes at Seeadler Harbour, Manus, Admiralty Islands, killing at least 432 and wounding 371.

In 1945,  Heavy fighting in Surabaya between Indonesian nationalists and returning colonialists after World War II, today celebrated as Heroes’ Day (Hari Pahlawan).

In 1951,  Direct-dial coast-to-coast telephone service begins in the United States.

In 1954,  U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicates the USMC War Memorial (Iwo Jima memorial) in Arlington National Cemetery.

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The Hope Diamond in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

In 1958,  The Hope Diamond is donated to the Smithsonian Institution by New York diamond merchant Harry Winston.

In 1969,  National Educational Television (the predecessor to the Public Broadcasting Service) in the United States debuts the children’s television program Sesame Street.

In 1970,  Vietnam War: Vietnamization – For the first time in five years, an entire week ends with no reports of American combat fatalities in Southeast Asia.

In 1970, The Soviet Lunar probe Lunokhod 1 is launched.

In 1971,  In Cambodia, Khmer Rouge forces attack the city of Phnom Penh and its airport, killing 44, wounding at least 30 and damaging nine aircraft.

In 1972,  Southern Airways Flight 49 from Birmingham, Alabama is hijacked and, at one point, is threatened with crashing into the nuclear installation at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After two days, the plane lands in Havana, Cuba, where the hijackers are jailed by Fidel Castro.

In 1975,  The 729-foot-long freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks during a storm on Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew on board.

In 1975,  United Nations Resolution 3379: United Nations General Assembly approves a resolution equating Zionism with racism (the resolution is repealed in December 1991 by Resolution 4686).

In 1979,  A 106-car Canadian Pacific freight train carrying explosive and poisonous chemicals from Windsor, Ontario, Canada derails in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada just west of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, causing a massive explosion and the largest peacetime evacuation in Canadian history and one of the largest in North American history.

In 1984,  The first Breeders’ Cup takes place at Hollywood Park Racetrack.

In 1989,  The longtime leader of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria Todor Zhivkov is removed from office and replaced by Petar Mladenov.

In 1989,   German citizens begin to bring the Berlin Wall down

In 1995,  In Nigeria, playwright and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, along with eight others from the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop), are hanged by government forces.

In 1997,  WorldCom and MCI Communications announce a $37 billion merger (the largest merger in US history at the time).

In 2006,  Sri Lankan Tamil Parliamentarian Nadarajah Raviraj is assassinated in Colombo.

In 2006,  The National Museum of the Marine Corps is opened and dedicated by U.S. President George W. Bush and announces that Marine Corporal Jason Dunham will receive the Medal of Honor in Quantico, Virginia.

In 2007,  ¿Por qué no te callas? incident between King Juan Carlos of Spain and Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez.

English: “Why don’t you shut up?”) is a phrase that was uttered by King Juan Carlos I of Spain to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, at the 2007 Ibero-American Summit in Santiago, Chile, when Chávez was repeatedly interrupting Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero‘s speech. Following international attention, the phrase became an overnight sensation, gaining cult and meme status as a mobile-phone ringtone, spawning a domain name, a contest, T-shirt sales, a television program and YouTube videos.

In 2007,  10,000–40,000 people march toward the royal palace of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur to hand over a memorandum to the King demanding electoral reform.

In 2008,  Over five months after landing on Mars, NASA declares the Phoenix mission concluded after communications with the lander were lost.

In 2009,  Ships of the South and North Korean navies skirmish off Daecheong Island in the Yellow Sea.

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Dino De Laurentiis

In 2010,  Dino De Laurentiis, Italian-American actor, producer, and production manager (b. 1919) dies at his home in Beverly Hills at the age of 91. He was an Italian film producer. Along with Carlo Ponti, he was one of the producers that brought Italian cinema to the international scene at the end of WWII. He produced or co-produced more than 500 films, of which 38 were nominated for Academy Awards. He also had a brief acting career in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He was born at Torre Annunziata in the province of Naples, and grew up selling spaghetti made by his father’s pasta factory. He started his studies at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome in the years 1937–1938 then interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War.

In 2019, President of Bolivia Evo Morales and several of his government resign after 19 days of civil protests and a recommendation from the military.

In 2020, Armenia and Azerbaijan sign a ceasefire agreement, ending the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, and prompting protests in Armenia.