This is the 10th day of 2024. There are 356 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1994: The trial of Lorena Bobbitt, who cut off her husband’s penis, begins.

OTHER EVENTS

49 BC: Julius Caesar defies the Roman Senate and crosses the Rubicon, uttering “Alea iacta est” (The die is cast), signalling the start of a civil war which would lead to his appointment as Roman dictator for life.

1776: Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense, a 50-page pamphlet that sells more than 500,000 copies within a few months and calls for a war of independence that would become the American Revolution.

1863: London’s Metropolitan, the world’s first underground passenger railway, opens to the public.

1878: The US Senate proposes female suffrage.

1889: France establishes a protectorate over the Ivory Coast.

1901: The Texas oil boom starts, ushering in an era of American prosperity as it introduces the world to a new energy source.

1917: Suffragettes the “Silent Sentinels” first protest outside The White House in Washington, led by Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party.

1920: The League of Nations is established as the Treaty of Versailles goes into effect.

1928: Leon Trotsky, one of the chief architects of the Soviet Union, is ordered into exile by the Soviet Government.

1932: The Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony comics are syndicated.

1946: The first General Assembly of the United Nations convenes in London.

1955: The Federal Council of Nigeria meets for the first time.

1958: Jerry Lee Lewis’s Great Balls of Fire reaches number one on the UK pop charts.

1961: The University of Georgia, under court order, admits its first two black students, Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter (now reporter Charlayne Hunter-Gault).

1962: Some 4,000 die in an avalanche in Ranrahirca, Peru.

1964: The Beatles’ first album in the United States, Introducing the Beatles, is released.

1967: Republican Edward W Brooke of Massachusetts, the first black person elected to the US Senate by popular vote, takes his seat.

1969: Sweden becomes the first Western European country to announce it will establish full diplomatic relations with North Vietnam.

1971: French fashion designer Coco Chanel dies in Paris at age 87.

1984: The United States and the Vatican establish full diplomatic relations.

1990: The National Collegiate Athletic Association approves random drug testing for college football players. China ends seven months of martial law in Beijing.

1991: Japan ends routine fingerprinting of all adult ethnic Koreans.

1992: Pilots threaten to defect with their planes and sailors warn of mutiny if the two biggest Commonwealth states, Ukraine and Russia, split up the former Soviet military.

1993: At least 15 people are killed in Bombay on the fifth day of renewed rioting between Hindus and Muslims over Hindu militants’ destruction of a mosque in December.

1994: The US, Russia and Ukraine reach an agreement on the destruction of Ukraine’s entire nuclear arsenal.

1996: Chechen rebels flee with about 100 captives from a hospital in Dagestan, Russia; Russian troops kill the rebels and some of the hostages.

1997: In Sofia, Bulgaria, tens of thousands of demonstrators demanding the end of Socialist rule storm into Parliament, smashing windows and furniture and setting fire to one room.

1998: The German Government reaches an agreement to pay US$110 million to Holocaust survivors in eastern Europe.

2000: America Online agrees to buy Time-Warner for US$162 billion.

2003: North Korea announces it is withdrawing from the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which it signed in 1985.

2005: In a meeting with diplomats, Pope John Paul II urges the public to mobilise against world hunger, restates the Catholic Church’s ban on embryo stem cell use, and pushes for more opposition to threats against traditional families.

2010: China edges past Germany in 2009 to become the top exporter — yet another sign of its rapid rise and the spread of economic power from the West to the East.

2011: A judge orders former US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to serve three years in prison for his role in a scheme to illegally funnel corporate money to Texas candidates in 2002.

2012: President Bashar Assad vows to use an “iron hand” to crush what he calls the terrorists and saboteurs behind Syria’s 10-month-old uprising in which thousands of people have been killed.

2013: A total of 81 people are killed and 120 wounded by a twin bombing in Quetta, Pakistan. Iran resumes nuclear research two years after halting the work to avoid possible UN economic sanctions.

2018: Jeff Bezos becomes the second man with a net worth of over US$100 billion as his wealth hits US$106 billion due to a rise in Amazon’s share price.

2019: Thirteen-year-old Jayme Closs escapes her kidnapper after three months in captivity in Wisconsin, USA. Oceans are warming faster than previous thought due to fossil fuel burning, according to data published in journal Science.

2021: PGA of America pulls the 2022 PGA Championship from Trump National GC at Bedminster, New Jersey, days after supporters of President Donald Trump attacked the US Capitol.

2022: The US Mint issues quarter coins commemorating poet Maya Angelou, the first black woman to be so depicted.

2023: Prince Harry’s memoir Spare goes on sale worldwide, revealing controversial details of his upbringing and fallout with the British royal family.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

John Dalberg Action, English historian (1834- 1902); Alexander Scriabin, Russian composer (1872- 1915); Amy Ashwood Garvey, Jamaican co-founder of United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and activist (1897-1969); Rod Stewart, British rock and pop singer-songwriter (1945- ); George Foreman, American Boxing hall of famer (1949- )