December 10 in History

Nguyễn Trung Trực, born Nguyễn Văn Lịch, was a Vietnamese fisherman who organized and led village militia forces which fought against French colonial forces in the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam in the 1860s. He was active in Tân An and Rạch Giá from the initial French invasion until he was captured and executed.

The Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) was a conflict between the Ottoman Empire and a coalition led by the Russian Empire which included Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro. Precipitating factors included the Russian goals of recovering territorial losses endured during the Crimean War of 1853–1856, re-establishing itself in the Black Sea and supporting the political movement attempting to free Balkan nations from the Ottoman Empire.

The Spanish–American War was fought between Spain and the United States in 1898. It began with the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, and resulted in the U.S. acquiring sovereignty over Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, and establishing a protectorate over Cuba. It represented U.S. intervention in the Cuban War of Independence and Philippine Revolution, with the latter later leading to the Philippine–American War. The Spanish–American War brought an end to almost four centuries of Spanish presence in the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific; the United States meanwhile not only became a major world power, but also gained several island possessions spanning the globe, which provoked rancorous debate over the wisdom of expansionism.

The Aswan Low Dam or Old Aswan Dam is a gravity masonry buttress dam on the Nile River in Aswan, Egypt. The dam was built by the British at the former first cataract of the Nile, and is located about 1000 km up-river and 690 km south-southeast of Cairo. When initially constructed between 1899 and 1902, nothing of its scale had ever been attempted; on completion, it was the largest masonry dam in the world. The dam was designed to provide storage of annual floodwater and augment dry season flows to support greater irrigation development and population growth in the lower Nile. The dam, originally limited in height by conservation concerns, worked as designed, but provided inadequate storage capacity for planned development and was raised twice: between 1907 and 1912 and again between 1929 and 1933. These heightenings still did not meet irrigation demands and in 1946 it was nearly over-topped in an effort to maximize pool elevation. This led to the investigation and construction of the Aswan High Dam 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) upstream.

The Brown Dog affair was a political controversy about vivisection that raged in Britain from 1903 until 1910. It involved the infiltration of University of London medical lectures by Swedish feminists, battles between medical students and the police, police protection for the statue of a dog, a libel trial at the Royal Courts of Justice, and the establishment of a Royal Commission to investigate the use of animals in experiments. The affair became a cause célèbre that divided the country.

Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand, and formerly known as Siam until 1939, is a country located in Mainland Southeast Asia. It shares land borders with Myanmar to the west and northwest, Laos to the east and northeast, Cambodia to the southeast, and Malaysia to the south. Its maritime boundaries include the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea, as well as maritime borders with Vietnam, Indonesia, and India. Thailand has a population of nearly 66 million people and covers an area of approximately 513,115 km2. The country's capital and largest city is Bangkok.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, the latter enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the only nuclear weapons used in war. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 60 to 75 million people. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides, including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

The Polish government-in-exile was formed in the aftermath of the September 1939 invasion and subsequent occupation of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Slovak Republic, which brought to an end the Second Polish Republic.

The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Armed conflict continued intermittently from 1 August 1927 until Communist victory resulted in their near-complete control over mainland China on 10 December 1949.

Zanzibar is a Tanzanian archipelago off the coast of East Africa. It is located in the Indian Ocean, and consists of many small islands and two large ones: Unguja and Pemba Island. The capital is Zanzibar City, located on the island of Unguja. Its historic centre, Stone Town, is a World Heritage Site.

The 300 million yen robbery , also known as the 300 million yen affair or 300 million yen incident, was an armed robbery that took place in Tokyo, Japan, on December 10, 1968. A man posing as a police officer on a motorcycle stopped bank employees transferring money and stole 294 million yen. It is the single largest heist in Japanese history to date, and remains unsolved.

The Kaohsiung Incident, also known as the Formosa Incident, the Meilidao Incident, or the Formosa Magazine incident, was a crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations that occurred in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, on 10 December 1979 during Taiwan's martial law period.

The United Nations General Assembly is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN), serving as its main deliberative, policymaking, and representative organ. Currently in its 80th session, its powers, composition, functions, and procedures are set out in Chapter IV of the United Nations Charter.

An independence referendum was held in Nagorno-Karabakh on 10 December 1991. It was approved by 99.98% of voters.

The Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Kazakhstan, the Kazakh SSR, KSSR, or simply Kazakhstan, was one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1936 to 1991. Being located in northern Central Asia, the Kazakh SSR was created on 5 December 1936 from the erstwhile Kazakh ASSR, which was an autonomous republic of the Russian SFSR. It shared borders with its fellow Soviet republics of Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, while also sharing an international border with the People's Republic of China.

Monkwearmouth Colliery was a major North Sea coal mine on the north bank of the River Wear in Sunderland, England, United Kingdom. It was the largest mine in the world and one of the most important in County Durham in northeast England. First opened in 1835 and in spite of the many accidents at the pit, the mine was the last to remain operating in the County Durham Coalfield. The last shift left the pit on 10 December 1993, ending over 80 years of commercial coal mining in the region. The Colliery site was cleared soon afterwards, and the Stadium of Light, the stadium of Sunderland A.F.C., was built over it, opening in July 1997 to replace nearby Roker Park.

The Israeli Ground Forces are the army of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The current commander of the ground forces is Major General Nadav Lotan.

Helen Elizabeth Clark is a New Zealand politician who served as the 37th prime minister of New Zealand from 1999 to 2008 and was the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme from 2009 to 2017. She was New Zealand's fifth-longest-serving prime minister, and the second woman to hold that office.

Ziad Abu Ein, also spelled Ziad Abu Ain, was a Palestinian politician. He was a member of the Fatah political party, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and a senior minister in the Palestinian Authority.

On the evening of 10 December 2016, two explosions caused by a car bombing and suicide bombing in Istanbul's Beşiktaş municipality killed 48 people and injured 166 others. 39 of those killed were police officers, 7 were civilians and 2 were perpetrators. The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK) assumed responsibility, claiming that their members killed more than 100 police officers.

The Ostrava hospital shooting was a mass shooting that occurred on 10 December 2019 at the Ostrava University Hospital in Ostrava, Czech Republic. A total of seven people were killed in the attack, and two others were injured. The illegally armed perpetrator, 42-year-old Ctirad Vitásek, left the scene before the police arrived and committed suicide as police closed in on him later during the day. The perpetrator had three previous criminal convictions, including one for a violent crime, and a previous hospitalization in a psychiatric ward.