June 10

323 BC Alexander The Great died of typhoid fever in Nebuchadnezzar II's Babylon palace, aged 32 on June 10, 323 BC. He left no successor, and his empire broke up into independent kingdoms. The rise of Alexander was prophesied 250 years before he was born in the Old Testament Book of Daniel (Daniel 8 v5-8 and 20-22). It predicts the kingdom of Medo Persia being overthrown by King of Greece. Then the kingdom is divided on his death between his four generals but they will not have the same power.

Dying Alexander, copy of 2nd century BC sculpture, By Urek Meniashvili

1692 Bridget Bishop was the first person deemed to be a witch in the Salem witch trials to be given the death penalty. She was executed by hanging on June 10, 1692.  Bishop was accused of not living a Puritan lifestyle, for she dressed differently and owned a tavern in her home, where shuffleboard was played and minors were served. Her odd costumes and "immoral" lifestyle, affirmed that she was a witch. She went to trial the same day and was convicted.

1720 Mustard was formerly made up into balls with honey or vinegar and a little cinnamon, to keep until needed, when they were mixed with more vinegar. It was sold in balls until a Mrs. Clements, of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, England invented a method of drying the seeds sufficiently well for them to be made into a powder. She first marketed her paste-style mustard on June 10, 1720.

1752 Benjamin Franklin conceived the idea of drawing down lightening from the clouds by means of a rod. There was nowhere high enough in Philadelphia to try this, so he used a kite with a metal key tied to the end of the string, which on June 10, 1752 he flew during a thunderstorm and created sparks. As a result of these researches into electrical current issues Franklin identified lightening as an electrical conductor and in 1753 he published details how to make his lightening rod.

1829 The Boat Race is an annual contest between two rowing crews from Oxford and Cambridge universities on the River Thames. It  was started by two friends by Charles Merivale (Cambridge) who sent a letter to his friend Charles (nephew of William) Wordsworth at Oxford proposing a match. The first race took place on June 10, 1829, which Oxford won by 5 or 6 lengths. The race was originally just 2.25 miles. but has been  rowed over a distance of 4 miles 374 yards since 1836.

1835 Rebecca Latimer Felton was born on June 10, 1835, in Decatur, Georgia, United States. Felton was known as a writer, lecturer, reformer, and politician. On November 21, 1922, Felton became the first woman to serve in the United States Senate. Felton's appointment as senator was symbolic, as she was chosen to fill the position for just one day, as the Georgia legislature was not in session at the time and her successor had already been elected.

1840 There were seven attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria. The first one on June 10, 1840 occurred during Victoria's first pregnancy, when eighteen-year old Edward Oxford attempted to kill the Queen whilst she was riding in a carriage with Prince Albert in London. Oxford fired twice, but both bullets missed. Many suggested that a Chartist conspiracy was behind the assassination attempt; others attributed the plot to supporters of the heir-presumptive, the King of Hanover.

Edward Oxford shooting at Queen Victoria By G. H. Miles, 1840

1865 Richard Wagner's Arthurian romance Tristan und Isolde debuted at the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich, today the home of the Bavarian State Opera, on June 10, 1865. Hans von Bülow was chosen to conduct the premiere, despite the fact that Wagner was having an affair with his wife, Cosima von Bülow. The opera's glorification of the adultery between the knight Tristan and the married Lady Isolde. enhanced the scandal Wagner's private life was creating.

1892 Composer Jean Sibelius married 17-year-old Aino Jarnefelt, "the prettiest girl in Finland" on June 10, 1892 at Maxmo in Finland. They spent their honeymoon in Karelia, the home of the Kalevala Archipelago, which served as an inspiration for several of Sibelius's works. The couple had six daughters, but their long marriage was blighted by Sibelius' addiction to alcohol. When he wrote a little salon piece for Aido in 1922, she rejected it because his "senses were sodden with champagne."

1895 L'Arroseur arrosé was an 1895 French short black-and-white silent comedy film directed and produced by Louis Lumière, which was first screened on June 10, 1895. The poster for L'Arroseur arrosé (see below) was the first ever poster designed to promote an individual film.

1909 The SOS distress signal was used for the first time on June 10, 1909, when the Cunard ocean liner SS Slavonia was wrecked off the Azores. The SOS letters are simply a convenient and distinctive combination and are not an acronym, although they have been popularly held to stand for such phrases as "Save Our Ship," "Save Our Souls" or "Send Out Succour".

1915 Canadian-American writer Saul Bellow was born Solomon Bellows in Lachine, Quebec on June 10, 1915. His parents had emigrated to Canada two years earlier from Saint Petersburg, Russia. Bellow is widely regarded as one of the greatest American novelists of the 20th century. He wrote numerous critically acclaimed works, including The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Herzog (1964), and Humboldt's Gift (1975). 

1921 Prince Philip was born on a kitchen table in Mon Repos on the Greek island of Corfu on June 10, 1921. He was born into the Greek and Danish royal families, the fifth and final child of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg. In December 1922, following unrest after Greece’s defeat in the Greco-Turkish War, Philippos' family was exiled, and fled the country aboard HMS Calypso. The royal baby was carried aboard in a cot made from a fruit box.

1922 Judy Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm in Grand Rapids, Minnesota on June 10, 1922.
Garland's birthplace in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, now a museum. Her parents were vaudevillians who settled in Grand Rapids to run a movie theater that featured vaudeville acts. Judy Garland's first appearance came at the age of one-and-a-half when she joined her two older sisters on the stage of her father's movie theater and sang a chorus of "Jingle Bells". She was billed as Baby Frances.

1926 The Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi began work on Barcelona’s fantastical Sagrada Familia Roman Catholic church in 1882. He joked that his client, God, was in no hurry to see it finished and it remains uncompleted. Gaudi spent his last years living as a hermit beneath the unfinished structure of his great Barcelona church. He was run over by a tram and looked so bedraggled that bystanders took him for a tramp and were slow in getting him to hospital, where he died on June 10, 1926.

1934 By 1924 the English composer Frederick Delius was paralyzed and blind, but with the assistance of a young English admirer Eric Fenby, he continued to compose. He died at his home at Grez-sur-Loing, France on June 10, 1934, aged 72.  Delius had wished to be buried in his own garden, but the French authorities forbade it. His alternative wish, despite his atheism, was to be buried in an English country churchyard and St Peter's Church, Limpsfield, Surrey was chosen.

1935 In May 1935 two American alcoholics, William G. Wilson — a stockbroker — and Dr Robert Smith — a surgeon - met for the first time. They struck up a solid friendship linked to their shared struggles with overcoming their drinking problems. Dr Robert Smith, had his last drink on June 10, 1935 and together with Wilson they started the Alcoholics Anonymous organization, whose purpose is "to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety."

1940 On June 10, 1940, Benito Mussolini sent Italy into the Second World War on the side of the Axis countries. After initially advancing in British Somaliland and Egypt, the Italians were defeated in East Africa, Greece, Russia and North Africa. Allied forces launched the first of four assaults on Monte Cassino in January 1944 with the intention of breaking through the Winter Line and seizing Rome, an effort that would ultimately take four months and cost 105,000 Allied casualties.

1944 Joe Nuxhall is the youngest baseball player ever to appear in a major league game. He was 15 years, 316 days old when he pitched 2/3 of an inning for the Cincinnati Reds on June 10, 1944. Nuxhall was called up to the majors due to a shortage of players during World War II.

1977 The first mass market personal computer, the Apple II, went on sale on June 10, 1977. The first Apple II computers on sale had a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor running at 1.023 MHz, two game paddles, 4 kB of RAM, an audio cassette interface for loading programs and storing data, and the Integer BASIC programming language built into the ROMs.

1979 The actor Paul Newman finished second in the 24 Hours of Le Mans car race on June 10, 1979.
Newman was an auto racing enthusiast and first became interested in motorsports while training at the Watkins Glen Racing School for the filming of the 1969 movie Winning. He was a frequent competitor in Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) events throughout the 1970s, eventually winning four national championships.

1997 Glynn Wolfe of Blythe, California died on June 10, 1997. He holds the Guinness World Record for the largest number of monogamous marriages (31). His final marriage was to Linda Wolfe (née Essex), who holds the record for having been most married woman in the world. She died single in 2010 with 23 ex-husbands. Wolfe died a month and a half before his 89th birthday. When Wolfe passed away, none of the women he married and only one of his 40-odd children attended the funeral.

2000 In 1970 the moderate wing of the Ba'ath party, led by lieutenant general Hafiz al-Assad, secured power in Syria in a bloodless coup. The following year Assad was elected president and he remained in charge of his country until his death from a heart attack on June 10, 2000. He was succeeded as president by his second-oldest son Bashar al-Assad, who was also made commander in chief of the armed forces, and leader of the Ba'ath Party.

Syrian president Hafez al-Assad on a official portrait.

2001 Barack Obama's second daughter, Natasha ("Sasha") was born on June 10, 2001. When he was sworn into his presidency, Obama vowed to have dinner with his wife and his two daughters five nights a week - a point he refused to back down on -and in spite of all his important duties, he still found time to coach his daughter Sasha's school basketball team and see his children daily.

2009 Chrysler was impacted by the automotive industry crisis of the late 2000s. The company managed to stay in business after participating in a bailout from the U.S. government through the Troubled Asset Relief Program. On June 10, 2009, Chrysler emerged from the bankruptcy proceedings with the United Auto Workers pension fund, Fiat S.p.A., and the U.S. and Canadian governments as principal owners.