10 December History


Month:                           Date:     

  • 1817    -    Mississippi is admitted as the 20th state.
  • 1861    -    Kentucky is admitted to the Confederate States of America.
  • 1862    -    The U.S. House of Representatives passes a bill creating the state of West Virginia.
  • 1869    -    Governor John Campbell signs the bill that grants women in Wyoming Territory the right to vote as well as hold public office.
  • 1898    -    The United States and Spain sign the Treaty of Paris, ceding Spanish possessions, including the Philippines, to the United States.
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  • 1917    -    The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the International Red Cross.
  • 1918    -    U.S. troops are called to guard Berlin as a coup is feared.
  • 1919    -    Captain Ross Smith becomes the first person to fly 11,500 miles from England to Australia.
  • 1936    -    Edward VIII abdicates to marry Wallis Warfield Simpson, an American-born divorcee.
  • 1941    -    Japanese troops invade the Philippine island of Luzon.
  • 1941    -    The siege of Tobruk in North Africa is raised.
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  • 1943    -    Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill that postpones a draft of pre-Pearl Harbor fathers.
  • 1943    -    Allied forces bomb Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.
  • 1949    -    150,000 French troops mass at the border in Vietnam to prevent a Chinese invasion.
  • 1950    -    Dr. Ralph J. Bunche becomes the first African-American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
  • 1977    -    On UN Human Rights Day, the Soviet Union places 20 prominent dissidents under house arrest, cutting off telephones and threatening to break up a planned silent demonstration in Moscow's Pushkin Square. Soviet newspapers decry human rights violations elsewhere in the world.

  • 10 December Birthdays

  • 1830    -    Emily Dickinson, American poet of more than 1,000 poems, seven published in her lifetime.
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  • 1851    -    Melvil Dewey, American librarian who created the Dewey Decimal System.
  • 1881    -    Viscount Alexander of Tunis, British soldier who took his title from his part in the Allied victories in North Africa.
  • 1891    -    Nelly Sachs, Nobel Prize-winning poet.
  • 1903    -    Mary Norton, English children's author (Bedknobs and Broomsticks).
  • 1907    -    Rumor Godden, English novelist (Black Narcissus).
  • 1908    -    Oliver Messian, French composer (Quartet for the End of Time).
  • 1911    -    Chester "Chet" Huntley, American broadcast journalist.