2003 - Blazing through the foggy streets of Dubai, Kenya’s Joseph Kahugu set a new course record of two hours nine minutes and 33 seconds to dethrone compatriot and three-time winner Wilson Kibet and win the Samsung Dubai Marathon. The competition in the men’s race was so intense that both the second and third-placed finishers also erased the existing record of two hours 12 minutes and 21 seconds set by Kibet in 2000. Gashaw Melese Asfaw of Ethiopia clocked a time of 2:10.40 to take second place, while compatriot Habtamu Bele was third in 2:11.02. Kibet, the man who reigned as the Dubai Marathon champion for three years but had candidly admitted before the race that it could be tough for him to win this time due to a recent illness, finished 10th.
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.
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.
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.
1985 - Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega sworn in as president of Nicaragua.
1988 - Frenchman Patrick Canado dies in the Paris-Dakar Rally.
1990 - Time Inc. and Warner Communications complete their merger to become Time Warner.
1992 - An IRA bomb concealed in a briefcase explodes 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.
2005 - Bangladesh makes history by winning their first cricket Test victory, crushing Zimbabwe by 226 runs.
2006 - Iran resumes atomic fuel research drawing fierce western criticism.
2008 - India’s Tata Motors Ltd unveils the world’s cheapest car, the Nano.
