Today in History: January 10
1815 - Britain declares war against King of Kandy in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka.
1863 - London’s Metropolitan, the world’s first underground passenger railway, opens.
1901 - Texas oil boom starts, ushering in an era of American prosperity as it introduces the world to a new energy source.
1920 - The League of Nations is established as the Treaty of Versailles goes into effect.
1946 - The first UN General Assembly convenes in London.
1955 - Federal Council of Nigeria meets for the first time.
1956 - Elvis Presley records the song Heartbreak Hotel.
1962 - Eruptions of Mount Huascaran in Peru destroy seven villages and kill 3,500.
1964 - Panama severs diplomatic relations with US.
1966 - India and Pakistan sign peace accord.
1967 - Edward W. Brooke, the first black elected to the US Senate by popular vote, takes his seat.
1968 - US Surveyor 7 spacecraft makes soft landing on moon, ending a series of unmanned explorations of lunar surface.
1978 - The Soviet Union launches two cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz capsule for a rendezvous with the Salyut VI space laboratory.
1984 - US and the Vatican establish full diplomatic relations for the first time in more than a century.
1988 - Frenchman Patrick Canado dies during the Paris-Dakar Rally.
1990 - Time Inc. and Warner Communications completes their merger to become Time Warner.
1992 - An IRA bomb concealed in a briefcase exploded in Whitehall, London.
1997 - Tens of thousands of demonstrators demanding the end of Socialist rule storm into parliament in Sofia, Bulgaria.
1993 - Boris Becker lifts the inaugural Qatar Open tennis championship.
2003 - North Korea announces it is withdrawing from the 1970 Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which it signed in 1985.
2006 - Iran resumes atomic fuel research drawing fierce western criticism.
2008 - India’s Tata Motors Ltd unveils the world’s cheapest car, the Nano.
2009 - Russia and the European Union sign a gas monitoring deal.
2011 - At least 36 people die in clashes between tribespeople and Arab nomads near Sudan’s north- south border.
2012 - A remote-controlled bomb blast kills 35 people in a market in Jamrud, northwest Pakistan.
2013 - Twin bomb blasts in Quetta and Mingora in Swat, Pakistan, kill at least 57 people.
2015 - Kuwait Airport police arrests former information minister Saad Bin Teflah as he was about to fly to Makkah.
HIGHLIGHT
2002
Israelis bulldoze Palestinian homes
The Palestinians were angered by Israel’s demolition of dozens of homes in the Rafah refugee camp in southern Gaza, leaving an estimated 700 people homeless. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights group said 55 houses were destroyed. The destructive pre-dawn raid sparked gunfights in the area, both sides said, although there were no reported casualties. Huge piles of rubble, twisted metal, wood and broken furniture were left in the mud where homes once stood. Weeping women and men and children sifted through the rubble trying to recover their belongings. Palestinian group Islamic Jihad said it was scrapping a deal with Yasser Arafat not to mount attacks in Israel, opening the way to fresh violence and dealing a blow to US peace efforts. The group’s military wing in the West Bank announced its decision after Israeli tanks and bulldozers demolished dozens of Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip and left hundreds of Palestinians out in the cold.
