TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2010: Churches, banquet halls and other wedding venues across the US are extra busy as couples seeking a perfect 10 rushed to tie the knot on a once-in-a-century milestone: October 10, 2010.

OTHER EVENTS

1859: Civil war breaks out in Argentina.

1886: The tuxedo dinner jacket makes its American debut at the autumn ball in Tuxedo Park, New York.

1911: Revolutionaries in Wuhan begin a revolt that spreads through southern China and leads to the overthrow of the 2,000-year-old Manchu dynasty.

1913: Atlantic and Pacific oceans are united when the Gamboa Dam in the Panama Canal is blown up.

1917: Brazil declares war on Germany in retaliation for the torpedoing of Brazilian ships.

1938: Nazi Germany completes the annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland.

1943: Generalissimo’ Chiang Kai-Shek becomes President of China.

1963: High dam collapses near Belluno, Italy, and resulting flood kills an estimated 1,800 people.

1970: Fiji becomes independent after nearly a century of British rule; Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte is kidnapped by the Quebec Liberation Front, a militant separatist group. His body is found a week later.

1973: US Vice-President Spiro Agnew resigns after his conviction for income tax evasion.

1980: Thousands of casualties are reported following earthquake in Al Asnan, Algeria.

1985: US jet fighters force an Egyptian airliner carrying hijackers of cruise ship Achille Lauro to land in Italy, where the hijackers are arrested.

1988: Suspected Tamil militants attack a village in northern Sri Lanka, killing at least 47 people as they sleep.

1990: The US freezes $564 million in economic and military aid to Pakistan because of its suspected continued development of nuclear weapons.

1991: German political leaders agree to establish large refugee camps to protect people seeking asylum. The agreement came amid a continuing wave of violence led by neo-Nazi skinhead youths against foreigners in Germany.

1992: A court in Karachi, Pakistan, acquits Asif Ali Zardari, the husband of Opposition Leader Benazir Bhutto, on charges of masterminding the murder of 29 rival political supporters.

1993: Socialist Andreas Papandreou returns to power in Greek elections.

1994: Haitian leader Lt Gen Raoul Cedras resigns, paving the way for the return of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

1995: Israel releases about 300 Palestinian prisoners and hands a military government office to the Palestine Liberation Organization in a fitful start to the West Bank autonomy agreement.

1996: Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers search house-to-house for anyone suspected of collaborating with the former regime, unleashing a wave of fear among ethnic minorities.

1997: A former senior FBI official is sentenced to 18 months in prison for his role in covering up a damning report about the 1992 stand-off at white supremacist Randall C Weaver’s cabin near Ruby Ridge, Idaho, which resulted in three deaths.

1998: Rebels use a missile to shoot down a jetliner carrying 40 civilians in eastern Congo, claiming it was ferrying government troops to the besieged town of Kindu.

1999: Cuban President Fidel Castro agrees to an emigration deal with Israel, where members of Cuba’s small Jewish minority are allowed to move to Israel using Canadian-issued exit visas.

2000: Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who 40 years earlier became the world’s first female prime minister, dies of a heart attack in Colombo, Sri Lanka, after voting in parliamentary elections. She was 84.

2003: US President Bush announces measures to increase US pressure on the Government of Cuban President Fidel Castro, including a crackdown on US tourists who visit Cuba illegally and the creation of a high-level task force to plan for a post-Castro Cuba.

2004: Afghans pack polling stations for a historic presidential election that is blemished when all 15 candidates opposing US-backed interim President Hamid Karzai withdrew, charging the government and the UN with fraud and incompetence.

2005: General Augusto Pinochet’s wife and younger son are arrested in Chile’s capital and charged as accomplices in a tax evasion case linked to an investigation into the former dictator’s multimillion-dollar fortune overseas.

— AP