Today is Friday, September 10, the 253rd day of 2010. There are 112 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1526 - Forces under Turkey's Suleiman I capture city of Buda in Hungary.
1654 - Russia's Czar Alexis takes Smolensk, occupied since 1611 by Poland.
1844 - France's war in Morocco ends with Treaty of Tangier.
1885 - Britain makes compromise settlement with Russia over Afghanistan frontier.
1898 - Empress Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary is assassinated by an Italian anarchist in Geneva.
1907 - British colony of New Zealand becomes a dominion.
1939 - German Army gains complete control of western Poland; Canada declares war on Germany.
1951 - Britain blocks Iran's sterling balances in the U.K. and bans export of essential raw materials to Iran in an effort to create economic trouble for Premier Mohammed Mossadegh so he will resign.
1953 - An earthquake destroys villages on Cyprus killing at least 40 people, 100 were seriously injured and thousands left homeless.
1963 - Twenty black students enter public schools in Birmingham, Tuskegee and Mobile, Alabama, following a standoff between federal authorities and Gov. George C. Wallace, who resisted integration.
1964 - Foreign ministers of Organization of African Unity approve plan to end rebellion and political strife in Congo.
1967 - Gibraltar electorate votes to retain link with Britain rather than to return to Spanish sovereignty.
1972 - United States vetoes U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for immediate cessation of military operations in Middle East.
1977 - Convicted murderer Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant, is the last person executed by the guillotine in France.
1979 - The Marines decide to reduce their active duty strength by 10,000 men to save money; bringing the Marine Corps to its lowest peacetime level in 18 years.
1984 - The U.S. House of Representatives passes a compromise measure for stronger health warnings on cigarette packages and advertising.
1989 - Hungary decides to allow about 7,000 East German refugees to leave for West Germany.
1990 - Iraq offers free oil to third world countries.
1991 - In Moscow, Mikhail Gorbachev convenes first human rights conference to be held in Soviet Union.
1992 - Fighting continues around Sarajevo's airport and U.N. Secretary General recommends increasing the 1,500-member peacekeeping force in Bosnia to as many as 7,500 soldiers.
1993 - Five Somali employees of Cable News Network are killed and four wounded in clan fighting.
1994 - Pope John Paul II begins a visit to former Yugoslavia.
1995 - A U.S. warship in the Adriatic Sea fires Tomahawk cruise missiles at Serb sites in northwestern Bosnia, damaging Serb air defenses.
1996 - Hurricane Hortense lashes Puerto Rico with punishing winds and torrents of rain killing seven people.
1998 - Afghanistan's Taliban rulers say nine of 11 Iranian diplomats missing since a battle in August are dead, but deny responsibility for the killings.
1999 - Three bombs explode in apartment buildings in Moscow and Volgodonsk, in southern Russia, killing at least 229 people and sparking speculation of a terrorist campaign in Russia.
2000 - Ecuador becomes the first Latin American country to adopt the U.S. dollar officially, as part of a controversial economic stabilization plan.
2001 - Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko sweeps the election to another five-year term on promises to merge with Russia and stand up to the West.
2002 - Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a senior operative of the al-Qaeda terrorist network who was suspected of coordinating September 11 attacks, is arrested in one of a series of raids on apartments in Karachi, Pakistan.
2003 - World Trade Organization talks in Mexico collapse over dispute on agricultural subsidies.
2004 - The Jamaican government urges 500,000 people to evacuate as Hurricane Ivan approaches, one of the strongest storms on record.
2005 - Gunmen botch a brazen assassination attempt on Afghanistan's defense minister, opening fire on his convoy in Kabul, while fresh fighting in the south leaves 30 suspected militants dead.
2006 - Montenegrins vote in the first parliamentary elections since their tiny Balkan state split from Serbia, while police announce a crackdown on an alleged ethnic Albanian terrorist group authorities said had threatened the ballot.
2007 - Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returns to Pakistan from a seven-year exile, hoping to campaign against the country's U.S.-allied military ruler, but is immediately charged with corruption and deported to Saudi Arabia hours later.
2008 - The world's largest particle collider passes its first major tests by firing two beams of protons in opposite directions around a 17-mile (27-kilometer) ring under the Franco-Swiss border.
2009 - Premier Silvio Berlusconi brushes off questions about any possible resignation over his sex scandal, saying he has been Italy's best premier ever.
Today's Birthdays:
Franz Werfel, Austrian writer (1890-1945); Sir Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji, Indian cricket player and maharaja of Nawanagar (1872-1933); Georges Bataille, French writer (1897-1962); Fay Wray, Canadian actress (1907-2004); Stephen Jay Gould, U.S. biologist and writer (1941-2002); Colin Firth, British actor (1960--); Guy Ritchie, director (1968--).
Thought for Today:
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh — George Bernard Shaw, Irish-born playwright (1856-1950)
