November 10

1202 The first major action of the Fourth Crusade was the Siege of Zara, which began in Zadar, Croatia on November 10, 1202. It was the first attack against a Catholic city by Catholic crusaders. The attack on Zadar by the crusaders was part of an agreement with Venice who had provided the crusaders with transport across the Adriatic. - the city having rebelled against Venetian economic domination.

1483 Martin Luther was born to Hans Luder and his wife Margarethe on November 10, 1483. He entered this world at the back of a stall at Eisleben market in Saxony, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. Luther was baptized as a Catholic the next morning on the feast day of St. Martin of Tours after whom he was named. In 1517 Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation when he criticized the Catholic Church's sale of indulgence in his 95 theses, which he nailed to the door of a Wittenburg church. 

Luther as an Augustinian friar

1619 On the night of November 10-11, 1619, while stationed in Neuburg an der Donau, French philosopher Rene Descartes shut himself in a room with a masonry heater to escape the cold. While within, he had a series of three dreams that inspired him to devote the rest of his life to developing a new, universal method for the perfection of all human knowledge.

1683 George II of Great Britain was born on November 10, 1683 in the German city of Hanover. He was the last British monarch born outside the British Isles. The son of George Louis, Hereditary Prince of Brunswick-Lüneburg (later King George I of Great Britain), and his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Celle he was King of Great Britain from 1727 until his death in 1760, George II was the last British monarch to command his troops in battle, at the Battle of Dettingen in June 1743.

1775 The United States Marine Corps was founded as the Continental Marines by a resolution of the Second Continental Congress on November 10, 1775 during the American Revolutionary War.
The Continental Congress' resolution stated that "two Battalions of Marines be raised" for service as landing forces for the recently formed Continental Navy. The resolution was drafted by future U.S. president John Adams.

1871 In January 1866, the missionary and explorer David Livingstone travelled to Africa to seek the source of the Nile. By 1871 he had been lost to the world for over five years and had trekked 30,000 miles in his attempt to find the river's source. The journalist H.M. Stanley eventually found Livingstone at Ujiji, on the bank of Lake Tanganyika in present day Tanzania on November 10, 1871, and greeted him with the famous words "Dr Livingstone I presume."

Henry Morton Stanley meets David Livingstone

1903 Several inventors patented windscreen cleaning devices in the early 20th century. Alabama born Mary Anderson devised an operational windshield wiper, which she called a "window cleaning device" for electric cars and other vehicles. Operated via a lever from inside a vehicle, her version of windshield wipers closely resembles the windshield wiper found on many early car models. It was patented on November 10, 1903.

1923 An Akita named Hachiko was born on November 10, 1923. The loyal pet appeared daily at Shibuya Station, Tokyo, to greet his master as he returned from work, a practice he continued for nearly ten years after the master died. A huge statue of an Akita was erected in the Shibuya Station, Tokyo, in 1934 to commemorate the faithful dog.

Hachikō (c. 1934)

1930 During the Lord Mayor’s procession in London on November 10, 1930, four elephants stampeded through a crowd of spectators on Victoria Embankment in their efforts to reach a red painted mascot lion held aloft by students. Nearly 50 people were injured and 20 received hospital treatment.

1938 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, 1st President of Turkey, developed liver and kidney problems during the last year of his life. He died on November 10, 1938, at age 57. At the exact time of his death, on every November 10th, at 09:05 am, most vehicles and people in the country's streets pause for one minute in remembrance.

1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt's most famous canine companion was his Scottish Terrier, Fala, who officially moved into the White House on November 10, 1940. One of the most famous presidential pets, Fala's antics were widely covered in the media and often referenced by the Roosevelts. Falal is part of the Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, DC and was called the "most photographed dog in the world."

1947 Hollywood actress Rita Hayworth married the actor and director Orson Welles in 1943, during the run of The Mercury Wonder Show. They struggled in their marriage. Hayworth said that Welles did not want to be tied down and on November 10, 1947, she was granted a divorce that became final the following year.

1951 Direct Distance Dialing (DDD) coast-to-coast telephone service was first offered on trial basis at Englewood, New Jersey, to 11 selected major cities across the United States. It began on November 10, 1951 when Mayor Leslie Denning of Englewood, New Jersey, called the mayor of Alameda, California. This service grew rapidly across major cities during the 1950s.

1958 On November 10, 1958 the merchant Harry Winston donated the Hope Diamond, the "most famous diamond in the world", to the Smithsonian Institution. The jewel is believed to have originated in India, where the original (larger) stone was purchased in 1666 by French gem merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier as the Tavernier Blue. The diamond was sent to the Smithsonian through U.S. Mail in a box wrapped in brown paper as simple registered mail with $2.44 postage.

1958 The flag of Guinea was adopted on November 10, 1958, 40 days after it declared its independence from France. The colors of the flag were adapted from those of the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain, the dominant movement at the time of independence. Red symbolizes the blood of the martyrs who died from slavery and wars, yellow represents the sun and the riches of the country, and green the country's vegetation.

1969 After five test shows and years of preparation, the American educational children's television series Sesame Street premiered on NET (National Educational Television, a precursor of PBS) on November 10, 1969. Sesame Street was the first television show to use an authentic inner-city street complete with trash and decay for a children's program. Actress Carol Burnett was the first celebrity to appear on Sesame Street, on that series' first episode.

1982 Leonid Brezhnev, 4th Head of State of the Soviet Union, died on November 10, 1982, three days after his last appearance in public. During the funerals of Soviet leaders there was a custom of displaying their decorations on velvet cushions, which were carried in the procession behind the coffin. However, as Brezhnev had more than two hundred of them, several were placed on each cushion.

1982 A statue of Guy the Gorilla was unveiled on November 10, 1982 at London Zoo. The gorilla, who became one of the enduring animal celebrities at London Zoo in the years after World War II, was seen by 62 million people. He died in 1978 while having a tooth operation — his molars had rotted from eating sweets thrown by adoring members of the public.

1983 Bill Gates first presented to the public the Microsoft operating system Windows 1.0 on November 10, 1983. It ran on 2 floppy disks and 192 KB of RAM.Windows 1.0 was officially released on November 20, 1985 as the first version of the Microsoft Windows line. Since then, new versions of Windows have gone on sale every three years.

1999 On November 10, 1999, United Parcel Service (UPS) became a public company when it sold 10 percent of its stock in an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. UPS had been a privately held company for nearly a century, but it decided to go public in order to raise capital to fund its expansion plans. It was the largest initial public offering of the century.

2007 Dr. Donda West, the mother of rapper Kanye West, tragically died at the age of 58 on November 10, 2007 due to heart problems resulting from her cosmetic surgery. As a result, Governor Schwarzenegger signed the "Donda West Law" legislation making it mandatory to prove wellbeing prior to undergoing cosmetic surgery.

2019 When Juan Evo Morales Ayma was inaugurated as the 80th President of Bolivia in January 2006, he became the country's first democratically elected, fully Amerindian leader. Re-elected in 2009 and 2014, he focused on the implementation of leftist policies, social programs, and combating the influence of the US and multinational corporations. Amidst allegations that Morales rigged the 2019 Bolivian general election, he resigned on November 10, 2019 and fled to Mexico where he was granted asylum.

Morales in 2018. By EneasMx