This Day in History

Today is Thursday, December 10, the 344th day of 2009. There are 21 days left in the year.

Today's Highlights

1948: United Nations (UN) General Assembly in Paris unanimously adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Six members of the Soviet bloc, Saudi Arabia and South Africa abstain.

1996: South African President Nelson Mandela signs a constitution guaranteeing equal rights to all races.

Other Notable Events

1520: Martin Luther publicly burns the papal edict demanding that he recant or face excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.

1719: The first recorded sighting of the Aurora Borealis takes place in New England.

1898: The Treaty of Paris between the United States (US) and Spain ends the Spanish-American War with Spain ceding Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to the US for $20 million.

1906: US President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for helping mediate an end to the Russo-Japanese War.

1931: Jane Addams becomes a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the first American woman so honoured.

1950: UN Mideast peace mediator Ralph J Bunche is presented the Nobel Peace Prize, the first black American to receive the award.

1958: The first domestic passenger jet flight takes place in the US as a National Airlines Boeing 707 flies 111 passengers from New York City to Miami.

1963: Zanzibar becomes independent within the Commonwealth.

1964: Dr Martin Luther King Jr receives the Nobel Peace Prize.

1967: World's first commercial thermonuclear blast takes place in the US state of New Mexico, to give access to natural gas from underground deposits.

1973: Austria closes its transit centre for Jews leaving the Soviet Union.

1976: In Lebanon, a truce accord ends fighting between Muslims and Christians in the south, clashes among Palestinian factions, heightened tensions among rival Christian parties and a Syrian crackdown against the Lebanese press.

1980: Milton Obote is sworn in as Uganda's president, becoming the first African president ousted in a military coup to recapture the presidency. He was ousted by the army for the second time in 1985.

1983: Democracy returns after seven years of dictatorship in Argentina, as Raul Alfonsin is sworn in as president.

1988: Chinese troops shoot into crowds of Tibetans demonstrating in Lhasa for human rights.

1993: African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela says he and President F W de Klerk are bound by the Nobel Peace Prize they accepted to spend the rest of their lives building a democratic, nonracial South Africa.

1994: Leaders of the Western Hemisphere's 34 democracies pledge to negotiate the world's largest duty-free trade zone by 2005.

1997: Palestinians begin their first census in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and are attacked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for violating Israeli sovereignty in East Jerusalem.

2001: US authorities charge a California bus company with illegally transporting tens of thousands of undocumented aliens across the US-Mexico border.

2007: Cristina Fernandez is sworn in as Argentina's first elected female president.

2008: Britain's obsession with reality television reaches new heights with the broadcast of the assisted suicide of a 59-year-old terminally ill American at a Swiss clinic.

Today's Birthdays

Ada King Lovelace, English mathematician and world's first computer programmer (1815-1852); Cesar Franck, Belgian composer (1822-1890); Emily Dickinson, US poet (1830-1886); Melvil Dewey, US librarian/inventor of the Dewey Decimal System (1851-1931); Mary Norton, English children's author (1903-1992); Susan Dey, US actress (1952-); Kenneth Branagh, British actor (1960-).

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