August 10

0955 King Otto I of Germany defeats the Magyars (Hungarians) at the Battle of Lechfeld in Germany, ending a possible invasion.

1500 Portuguese navigator Diego Diaz becomes the first European to arrive to the island of Madagascar. Situated in the Indian Ocean, over 250 miles (400 km) from the coast of Mozambique, prior to the 16th century Madagascar derived more influence from Asia than from Africa.

1519 Magellan's ships set sail to circumnavigate the Earth.

1539 King Francis of France declares that all official documents are to be written in French, not Latin.

1557 In the Spanish-French Wars, the French army looses over 14,000 men trying to block a Spanish army under Count Egmont at the Battle of Saint Quentin, France. The Spaniards lost just 50 men.

1582 Russia ends its 25-year war with Poland.

1627 France's Cardinal Richelieu begins the siege of the Huguenot fortress at La Rochelle with royal troops. The fortress finally fell 14 months later in October 1628.

1628 The Swedish warship Vasa capsizes and sinks in Stockholm harbour on her maiden voyage.

1675 The foundation stone of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, south London, is laid by order of King Charles II, with the aim of improving knowledge of the positions of stars and thus aiding navigation.

1680 In New Mexico, Pope leads a rebellion of Pueblo Indians against the Spanish. Note: Fifteen years after being driven out, the Spanish will retake the land, and the missions re-established.

1753 Birth: Edmund Jennings Randolph, governor of Virginia and first US attorney general.

1760 Philip Embury (1728-1773) arrives in New York the first Methodist clergyman to come over from England.

1779 Louis XVI of France frees the last remaining serfs on royal land.

1792 French Revolution: Revolutionaries occupy the Tuileries and kill the guards. The French royal family is forced to seek refuge in the hall of the Legislative Assembly and are quickly imprisoned.

1810 Birth: Count Cavour (Camilio Benso di Cavour), the first Italian Prime Minister in the new unified kingdom, having played the central role in its creation. He helped bring about the unification of Italy under the House of Saxony.

1821 Missouri enters the Union as the 24th state, and the first located entirely west of the Mississippi River. Named for one of the Native American groups that once lived in the territory, Missouri became a US possession as part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. In 1817, Missouri Territory applied for statehood, but the question of whether it would be slave or free delayed approval by Congress. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise was reached, admitting Missouri as a slave state but excluding slavery from the other Louisiana Purchase lands north of Missouri's southern border. Missouri's August 1821 entrance into the Union as a slave state was met with disapproval by many of its citizens. In 1861, when other slave states succeeded from the Union, Missouri chose to remain; although a provincial government was established in the next year by Confederate sympathizers. During the war, Missourians were split in their allegiances, supplying both Union and Confederate forces with troops. Lawlessness persisted during this period, and Missouri-born Confederate guerrillas such as Jesse James continued this lawlessness after the South's defeat. With the ratification of Missouri's new constitution by the citizens of the state in 1875, the old divisions were finally put to rest.

1827 Race riots in Cincinnati, Ohio persuade 1,000 blacks leave for Canada.

1831 William Driver of Salem, Massachusetts, becomes the first to use the term Old Glory in connection with the American flag, when he gives that name to a large flag aboard his ship, the Charles Daggett.

1831 Former slave Nat Turner leads a violent insurrection against slavery.

1833 Chicago, Illinois is incorporated, not as a city, but as a village, with a population of less than 200 at the time.

1835 A mob of whites and oxen pull a black school out of Canaan, New Hampshire, to a swamp.

1846 The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC is established by the United States Congress as an institute of learning. An Englishman, James Smithson, made it possible to create the institute with his generous monetary gift of $500,000; hence, the name, Smithsonian. The Smithsonian Institution supports a wide variety of research projects and publications. It also houses the national museums of natural history, technology, art and history.

1859 The first milk inspectors in the United States are appointed for duty in Boston, Massachusetts.

1861 US Civil War: Union General Nathaniel Lyon fights his last at Wilson's Creek, Missouri.

1863 Cambodia becomes a French protectorate.

1864 US Civil War: Confederate Commander John Bell Hood sends his cavalry north of Atlanta to cut off Union General William Sherman's supply lines.

1869 O.B. Brown of Malden, Massachusetts patents the motion-picture projector.

1874 Birth: Herbert Clark Hoover, 31st US President, in West Branch, Iowa, the first US President born west of the Mississippi River and the first to have a telephone at his desk. He held office during the depression (1929-1933). He died in 1964.

1885 America's first electric streetcar railway opens in Baltimore, Maryland, run by Leo Daft.

1884 Franziska Hitler dies. Klara Plozl, already pregnant with the first of the 6 children she will bear for the man she continues to call 'Uncle,' becomes Alois Hitler's common-law wife.

1904 Russian-Japanese War: The Russian Fleet take heavy losses when the Japanese fleet blocks them as they are trying to escape from Port Arthur in the battle of the Yellow Sea.

1913 The Treaty of Bucharest is signed between Bulgaria and the Balkan allies Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Romania, ending the second Balkan war. In 1878, Bulgaria had no army. By 1913, it had one of the most formidable land forces in Europe.

1915 General Leonard Wood sets up a military training camp in Plattsburg, New York. It will train 1,200 volunteers who pay for their own travel expenses, food and uniforms. By the summer of 1916, 16,000 men will be in unofficial military training. Note: General Wood was medically trained and was awarded the Medal of Honor during the Indian Wars while serving as an Assistant Surgeon in the Apache Campaign of the Summer of 1886. In 1895, he was the White House Physician to President Grover Cleveland. He began his long friendship with Theodore Roosevelt during his years in Washington. During the Spanish-American War he was the commander of the First Volunteer Cavalry (The Rough Riders) - Roosevelt was his second-in-command. Following the war, he served as Military Governor of Cuba until 1902. As a Brigadier General he fought the Moros during the Philippine Insurrection in 1904 and less than a year later he was named Army Chief of Staff by President William Howard Taft (who he knew in the Philippines where Taft served as Civilian Governor). In less than a decade, he had jumped from a Captain in the Medical Corps to the highest post in the Army. He resigned that position in 1914. When World War I broke out, he became a vocal advocate for preparedness. He hoped to be Secretary of War, but was not appointed. In 1927 he returned home from Manila to seek medical attention of a tumor resulting from an earlier head injury. He died on the operating table of a Boston hospital on August 7, 1927. He is buried in Section 21 of Arlington National Cemetery.

1917 WW1: Herbert Hoover is put in charge of the food program set up by the Lever Food and Fuel Control Act. It is designed to increase food production and distribution.

1918 WW1: General Pershing is permitted by the Allies to establish an independent American Army. He soon appoints Colonel George C. Marshall as his operations officer.

1920 The Red Army nears Warsaw; the collapse of Poland appears imminent.

1920 The Treaty of Sevres is signed between Turkey and the Allied powers, relieving Turkey of much of the land ruled by the Ottoman Empire and bringing the Ottoman Empire's rule to an end.

1921 Franklin D. Roosevelt is stricken with polio at his summer home on the Canadian Island of Campobello.

1930 Rudolf Hess circles his M-23 Messerschmitt (painted with a black swastika) over a leftist meeting in Munich, drowning out the speakers. (Missing Years)

1938 Holocaust: The great synagogue and Jewish community center in Nuremberg is demolished on Nazi orders. (Edelheit)

1939 The Warsaw government warns Germany that "any future intervention to the detriment of Polish rights and interests in Danzig will be considered an act of aggression."

1939 In Berlin, Julius Schnurre, head of the Economic Policy Department of the German Foreign Ministry, picks up discussions with Georgi Astakhov, Charge d'Affaires of the Soviet Embassy, sounding out the possibility of a pact between Germany and the Soviet Union.

1939 Delegates of the joint British-French military mission spend the day sightseeing in Leningrad.

1939 Alfred Naujocks, a young SS secret-service veteran and member of the SD since its founding in 1934, is personally ordered by Reinhard Heydrich to prepare a fake Polish attack on the radio station at Gleiwitz near the Polish border. "Practical proof is needed for these attacks by the Poles for the foreign press as well as German propaganda," Heydrich tells Naujocks. (Alfred Naujocks, sworn affidavit, Nuremberg, November 20, 1945; Shirer I)

1939 Night-time air war exercises are conducted over England on a larger scale than any time since WWI. 500 aircraft (bombers with fighter support) sweep in from the east to attack Birmingham, Rochester, Bedford, Brighton and Derby. 800 defenders take off to challenge the attackers. Defending forces are largely successful in beating off the attacking forces. Bombers approaching London have particular difficulty because of a balloon barrage above the capital.

1941 WW2: Great Britain and the Soviet Union promise aid to Turkey if it is attacked by the Axis Powers.

1941 Holocaust: The Germans drive the 3,000 Jews of the Banat region in Yugoslavia from their homes and take them to the Tasmajdan camp near Belgrade, where they are shot in the camp itself, and on the banks of the Danube, in daily executions. (Atlas)

1942 Holocaust: Aug 10-Oct 15 An estimated 150,000 Jews are murdered by the Germans and their collaborators during the liquidation of the ghettos in Wolyn.

1944 Diary of Leon Gladun: Just now (at 13:39) a shell hit our battery followed by another. The enemy barrages are very close--around 4,000 yards, so no wonder that we get a German "gift" from time to time.

1945 WW2: Japanese radio stations announce that a message has been sent accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration provided this "does not compromise any demand that prejudices the prerogatives of the Emperor as sovereign ruler."

1945 Death: Robert Goddard, father of American rocketry.

1949 The National Military Establishment becomes the Department of Defense.

1950 Korea: President Harry Truman calls the National Guard to active duty.

1954 Workers at the Studebaker auto plant in South Bend, Indiana, agree to take pay cuts of from $12 to $20 weekly in an attempt to help the faltering automaker. Note: Studebaker will soon be out of business because of increased competition from Ford, General Motors and Chrysler.

1954 Construction begins on the St. Lawrence Seaway.

1961 Britain first applies for membership of the EEC.

1965 Joe Engle reachs 82km altitude in an X-15.

1966 Orbiter 1, the US's first moon satellite, is launched from Cape Kennedy. It is the first craft to transmit lunar photographs of possible landing sites and crashs into the far side of the moon on October 29.

1966 A daylight meteor is seen from Utah to Canada. It is the only known case of a meteor entering the Earth's atmosphere and leaving it again.

1969 Members of the Charles Manson cult murder Leno and Rosemary LaBianca one day after the killing of Sharon Tate and four other people.

1969 Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda announces nationalisation of copper mining companies. Copper is the key to Zambia's economy, contributing over 50 percent of government revenue.

1975 David Frost purchases the exclusive rights to interview Richard Nixon.

1977 The "Son of Sam," David Berkowitz, is arrested in Yonkers, NY. Berkowitz, a postal employee, had shot and killed six people and wounded seven others.

1981 The Richard Nixon Museum in San Clemente closes.

1988 US President Reagan signs a measure that provides $20,000 payments to Japanese-Americans who were interned by the U.S. government during World War II.

1989 Poland's Roman Catholic church suspends an agreement to move nuns from a convent on the edge of Auschwitz, blaming Jewish groups for creating what it called an 'atmosphere of aggressive demands'.

1990 The Magellan spacecraft enters the orbit of Venus, marking the most prolific image gathering of Venus to date. Thanks to Magellan, astronomers learn that Venus's surface is hotter than that of any other planet in the solar system, including Mercury, due to a run away greenhouse effect caused by an atmosphere composed of 96 percent carbon dioxide.

1991 In Phoenix, AZ, nine Buddhists are found slain in their temple. Two underage males are arrested for the crime.

1994 In Germany, three men are arrested after being caught smuggling plutonium into the country.

1994 US President Clinton claims presidential immunity when he asks a federal judge to dismiss, at least for the time being, a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Paula Corbin Jones.

1995 Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols are charged with 11 counts in the Oklahoma City bombing.

1995 Michael Fortier pleads guilty in a plea-bargain agreement. The agreement requires that he testify for the prosecution in the Oklahoma City Federal building bombing trial.

2004