Today is Monday, August 10, the 222nd day of 2009. There are 143 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1566 - Iconoclastic riots by fanatical Calvinists break out in the Netherlands.
1627 - French forces under Cardinal Richelieu begin siege of La Rochelle, held by Huguenots. Three-quarters of its inhabitants die of starvation during the 15-month siege.
1628 - The Swedish warship Vasa capsizes in Stockholm harbor on its maiden voyage. It is raised in 1961.
1664 - Truce of Vasvar ends war between Turkey and Holy Roman Empire, whereby rival armies are to withdraw from Transylvania.
1741 - Prussia's King Frederick II takes Breslau in Poland.
1787 - Turkey declares war on Russia, fearing designs on Georgia.
1792 - French monarchy is overthrown when mobs in Paris attack palace of King Louis XVI.
1842 - Lord Ashley's Mine Act prohibits women and children under 10 from working underground in Britain.
1866 - Bolivia cedes territory between Andes and Pacific Ocean to Chile.
1885 - Leo Daft opens America's first commercially operated electric streetcar, in Baltimore.
1897 - A young researcher at German chemical firm Bayer, Felix Hoffman, first synthesizes acetylsalicylic acid, aspirin's active ingredient.
1904 - Japan's navy cripples Russian fleet off Port Arthur.
1913 - Bulgaria gives up its claim to Macedonia in a peace treaty signed in Bucharest, ending Second Balkan War. Tensions remain in the region, exploding a year later in World War I.
1914 - France declares war on Austria-Hungary at the start of World War I.
1919 - Anglo-White Russian forces defeat Soviet forces in North Dvina.
1945 - Japan offers to surrender in World War II if Emperor Hirohito is permitted to keep his throne.
1955 - A New Jersey district judge revokes the U.S. citizenship of Italian-born racketeer Vito Genovese on grounds of concealing his criminal record at naturalization proceedings in 1936.
1962 - Soviet Union rejects proposed U.S. inspection plan as part of any disarmament agreement.
1972 - The U.S. House defeats an end-the-war amendment for withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Indochina. This was caused by a split in anti-war forces over the pullout date from Vietnam.
1975 - Nationalist China resumes air flights to Japan. Taiwan had severed plane service in April 1974, in retaliation for an aviation agreement Japan had signed with China.
1977 - U.S. postal employee David Berkowitz is arrested in Yonkers, New York after being accused of being the "Son of Sam" gunman responsible for six random slayings and wounding seven people. He is serving six consecutive terms of 25 years to life in state prison.
1980 - Two Britons, Telery Jones, 43, and her son Owen, 18, abducted off their farm by 20 pro-Cuban National Liberation Army guerillas on Jan. 5, are released.
1983 - With support from Libya in their long-running civil war, Chadian insurgents overrun the outpost of Faya-Largeau in northern Chad.
1987 - Police disperse striking mine workers who halted rail and road travel as more than 100 strikes cripple South Korea's industries.
1988 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a measure providing $20,000 payments to Japanese-Americans interned by the U.S. government during World War II.
1990 - Arab heads of state condemn Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and send pan-Arab defense force to Saudi Arabia; Iraqi President Saddam Hussein calls on Muslims to launch "holy war" against foreign troops and "corrupt" Arab rulers.
1991 - Serbs and Croats exchange prisoners for first time during their undeclared war.
1992 - The British government designates Northern Ireland's largest Protestant paramilitary group, the Ulster Defense Association, as an illegal organization. The action makes it a crime to belong to the group, raise money for it, or participate in activities.
1993 - The United States says Bosnian Serbs could face a NATO airstrike unless they abandon positions on two strategic mountains near Sarajevo. The Serbs evacuate four days later.
1994 - Feminist Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin, under a death threat from Islamic extremists, flees to Sweden.
1995 - Two of Saddam Hussein's daughters, their husbands and a group of army officers flee to Jordan. King Hussein grants them political asylum.
1996 - Chechen rebels drive back Russian troops from the center of Grozny and withstand barrages of Russian aircraft and artillery fire.
1997 - Photos of British Princess Diana embracing film producer Dodi Fayed are published in the London Sunday Mirror, raising speculation about her future.
1998 - More than 2,000 people die in flooding in China.
1999 - Rebel-allied soldiers free some 200 remaining captives in Sierra Leone, who were kidnapped during a scheduled handover of civilians abducted during Sierra Leone's eight-year civil war.
2000 - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez holds talks with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, defying the United States by being the first head of state to go to Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War.
2001 - A 2-year-old girl dies after she is left inside a day-care center van for three hours on a sweltering summer afternoon in Florida. Temperatures in the van likely reached 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius).
2002 - Turkey's economy minister, Kemal Dervis, resigns from the government of ailing Premier Bulent Ecevit ahead of early November elections.
2003 - A judicial inquiry into the July suicide of British government weapons scientist David Kelly is held. Kelly was found dead days after being questioned about whether he was the source for a May British Broadcasting Corp. report alleging that the British government had doctored a September 2002 intelligence dossier to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraqi weapons programs.
2004 - A previously unknown Kurdish group claims responsibility for pre-dawn bomb attacks against two hotels in Istanbul tourist districts killing two people and injuring 11 others.
2005 - Police in Brazil examine fingerprints and other evidence left behind by thieves who stole $67.8 million from the Central Bank in one of the world's biggest heists.
2006 - British authorities thwart an alleged terrorist plot to simultaneously blow up 10 aircraft heading to the U.S. using explosives smuggled in hand luggage.
2007 - Clashes between troops and suspected al-Qaida-linked militants have killed at least 52 people on volatile southern Jolo island in the Philippines.
2008 — Russia and Georgia clash on land and at sea despite a Georgian cease-fire offer and claim of withdrawal from the separatist province of South Ossetia.
Today's Birthdays:
Count Camillo Cavour, Italian statesman (1810-1861); Jay Cooke, U.S. financier (1821-1905); Charles Keene, British artist and illustrator (1823-1891); Alexander Glazounov, Russian composer (1865-1936); Herbert Hoover, U.S. president (1874-1964); Leo Fender, U.S. guitar manufacturer (1909-1991); Rosanna Arquette, U.S. actress (1959--); Antonio Banderas, Spanish actor (1960--).
Thought For Today:
Literature is news that STAYS news — Ezra Pound, American poet-critic (1885-1972).
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
