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February 10 in History

Your birthday shares the stage with stories that shaped the world. Born on this day: Bob Iger, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Choi Si Won.

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Treaty of Paris Signed: Britain Dominates North America
1763Event

Treaty of Paris Signed: Britain Dominates North America

Britain, France, and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris on February 10, 1763, ending the Seven Years' War and fundamentally redrawing the map of North America. France surrendered virtually all of its territory east of the Mississippi River to Britain, including Canada and the Ohio Valley, while ceding Louisiana west of the Mississippi to Spain as compensation for Spain's loss of Florida to Britain. The treaty eliminated France as a North American power and left Britain dominant from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. The immediate consequence was catastrophic: Britain's massive war debt led directly to the taxation policies that provoked the American Revolution within twelve years. For Native Americans, the loss of France removed their primary counterweight against British colonial expansion, leaving them facing a single imperial power with little incentive to negotiate. Pontiac's War erupted within months.

Famous Birthdays

Bob Iger
Bob Iger

b. 1951

Chloë Grace Moretz
Chloë Grace Moretz

b. 1997

Choi Si Won

Choi Si Won

b. 1987

Harold Macmillan

Harold Macmillan

1894–1986

Jim Cramer

Jim Cramer

b. 1955

Lee Hsien Loong

Lee Hsien Loong

b. 1952

Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb

1775–1834

Cliff Burton

Cliff Burton

1962–1986

John Franklin Enders

John Franklin Enders

d. 1985

Son Na-eun

Son Na-eun

b. 1994

Sooyoung

Sooyoung

b. 1990

Walter Houser Brattain

Walter Houser Brattain

d. 1987

View all 312 births on February 10 →

Historical Events

Britain, France, and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris on February 10, 1763, ending the Seven Years' War and fundamentally redrawing the map of North America. France surrendered virtually all of its territory east of the Mississippi River to Britain, including Canada and the Ohio Valley, while ceding Louisiana west of the Mississippi to Spain as compensation for Spain's loss of Florida to Britain. The treaty eliminated France as a North American power and left Britain dominant from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. The immediate consequence was catastrophic: Britain's massive war debt led directly to the taxation policies that provoked the American Revolution within twelve years. For Native Americans, the loss of France removed their primary counterweight against British colonial expansion, leaving them facing a single imperial power with little incentive to negotiate. Pontiac's War erupted within months.
1763

Britain, France, and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris on February 10, 1763, ending the Seven Years' War and fundamentally redrawing the map of North America. France surrendered virtually all of its territory east of the Mississippi River to Britain, including Canada and the Ohio Valley, while ceding Louisiana west of the Mississippi to Spain as compensation for Spain's loss of Florida to Britain. The treaty eliminated France as a North American power and left Britain dominant from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. The immediate consequence was catastrophic: Britain's massive war debt led directly to the taxation policies that provoked the American Revolution within twelve years. For Native Americans, the loss of France removed their primary counterweight against British colonial expansion, leaving them facing a single imperial power with little incentive to negotiate. Pontiac's War erupted within months.

Hulagu Khan's Mongol army breached Baghdad's walls on February 10, 1258, after a siege of just twelve days. What followed was one of history's most devastating sackings. The Abbasid Caliph al-Musta'sim was executed by being rolled in a carpet and trampled by horses, a method that avoided spilling royal blood, which the Mongols considered taboo. Estimates of civilian deaths range from 200,000 to over a million. The Mongols destroyed the House of Wisdom, the greatest library in the Islamic world, throwing so many books into the Tigris that the river reportedly ran black with ink for days. Irrigation canals that had sustained Mesopotamian agriculture for millennia were systematically destroyed. Baghdad, which had been the intellectual and cultural capital of the Islamic world for five centuries, never recovered its former prominence. The sacking marked the end of the Islamic Golden Age and shifted the center of Islamic power permanently westward to Cairo.
1258

Hulagu Khan's Mongol army breached Baghdad's walls on February 10, 1258, after a siege of just twelve days. What followed was one of history's most devastating sackings. The Abbasid Caliph al-Musta'sim was executed by being rolled in a carpet and trampled by horses, a method that avoided spilling royal blood, which the Mongols considered taboo. Estimates of civilian deaths range from 200,000 to over a million. The Mongols destroyed the House of Wisdom, the greatest library in the Islamic world, throwing so many books into the Tigris that the river reportedly ran black with ink for days. Irrigation canals that had sustained Mesopotamian agriculture for millennia were systematically destroyed. Baghdad, which had been the intellectual and cultural capital of the Islamic world for five centuries, never recovered its former prominence. The sacking marked the end of the Islamic Golden Age and shifted the center of Islamic power permanently westward to Cairo.

American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was exchanged for Soviet master spy Rudolf Abel on the Glienicke Bridge between West Berlin and Potsdam on February 10, 1962. Powers had been shot down over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, during a high-altitude reconnaissance mission the US initially denied existed. Eisenhower was forced to admit the truth when the Soviets produced both the pilot and the mostly intact aircraft. The incident torpedoed a planned Paris summit between Eisenhower and Khrushchev. Abel, born William Fisher, had run a Soviet spy network in New York for nine years before being caught through a defecting assistant. The bridge exchange established the Cold War's unwritten protocol for resolving espionage crises: captured agents were assets to be traded, not political prisoners to be punished. The Glienicke Bridge became known as the 'Bridge of Spies,' hosting several subsequent Cold War exchanges.
1962

American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was exchanged for Soviet master spy Rudolf Abel on the Glienicke Bridge between West Berlin and Potsdam on February 10, 1962. Powers had been shot down over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, during a high-altitude reconnaissance mission the US initially denied existed. Eisenhower was forced to admit the truth when the Soviets produced both the pilot and the mostly intact aircraft. The incident torpedoed a planned Paris summit between Eisenhower and Khrushchev. Abel, born William Fisher, had run a Soviet spy network in New York for nine years before being caught through a defecting assistant. The bridge exchange established the Cold War's unwritten protocol for resolving espionage crises: captured agents were assets to be traded, not political prisoners to be punished. The Glienicke Bridge became known as the 'Bridge of Spies,' hosting several subsequent Cold War exchanges.

IBM's Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in the first game of their 1996 match in Philadelphia, the first time a computer had beaten a reigning champion under standard tournament conditions. Kasparov recovered to win the match 4-2, but the psychological damage was done. The rematch in May 1997 produced the result that shook the world: Deep Blue won the six-game series 3.5 to 2.5. Kasparov accused IBM of cheating, demanding to see the computer's logs, which IBM refused. He was particularly suspicious of a move in Game 2 that seemed too creative for a machine. IBM dismantled Deep Blue after the match and never agreed to a rematch. The victory demonstrated that brute computational force, evaluating 200 million positions per second, could overcome human intuition in the domain humans considered their ultimate intellectual benchmark. Chess has never been the same; today the weakest smartphone engine can defeat any human grandmaster.
1996

IBM's Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in the first game of their 1996 match in Philadelphia, the first time a computer had beaten a reigning champion under standard tournament conditions. Kasparov recovered to win the match 4-2, but the psychological damage was done. The rematch in May 1997 produced the result that shook the world: Deep Blue won the six-game series 3.5 to 2.5. Kasparov accused IBM of cheating, demanding to see the computer's logs, which IBM refused. He was particularly suspicious of a move in Game 2 that seemed too creative for a machine. IBM dismantled Deep Blue after the match and never agreed to a rematch. The victory demonstrated that brute computational force, evaluating 200 million positions per second, could overcome human intuition in the domain humans considered their ultimate intellectual benchmark. Chess has never been the same; today the weakest smartphone engine can defeat any human grandmaster.

1258

The Mongols destroyed Baghdad's libraries by throwing books into the Tigris. The river ran black with ink for six months. The House of Wisdom — 500 years of accumulated manuscripts on mathematics, astronomy, medicine — gone in two weeks. Hulegu Khan wrapped the last Abbasid caliph in a carpet and had him trampled to death by horses. Islamic law forbade spilling royal blood directly. The Mongols found a workaround. Baghdad had been the intellectual center of the Islamic world for five centuries. It wouldn't recover for 700 years.

1306

Robert the Bruce stabbed John Comyn in front of a church altar during peace negotiations. His companion asked if Comyn was dead. Bruce said he wasn't sure. The companion went back inside and finished the job. Bruce had just killed his main rival for Scotland's throne and committed sacrilege in one move. The Pope excommunicated him. Six weeks later, Scottish nobles crowned him king anyway. England had controlled Scotland for a decade. Bruce's murder started a 22-year war that ended with Scottish independence.

1355

A tavern brawl between Oxford scholars and a local innkeeper erupted into two days of pitched street fighting that left sixty-three students and about thirty townspeople dead. The St. Scholastica's Day riot was the bloodiest town-gown clash in English history and exposed deep resentments over university privileges and tax exemptions. King Edward III punished the town by granting Oxford sweeping new judicial powers over local residents that lasted for centuries.

1392

Byzantine Emperor Manuel II married Helena Dragash, daughter of Serbian Prince Constantine, forging a dynastic alliance between Constantinople and Serbia as both Christian states faced Ottoman expansion. Helena was crowned empress the following day and would prove a stabilizing political force during the empire's final decades. Their son Constantine XI became the last Byzantine emperor, dying on the walls of Constantinople in 1453.

1567

Lord Darnley was found dead in a garden wearing only his nightshirt. The house behind him was rubble — gunpowder had torn it apart. But he wasn't burned. He wasn't crushed. He was strangled. So was his servant, lying next to him. Someone set the explosion to cover a murder that had already happened. Mary, Queen of Scots, married the chief suspect three months later. She lost her throne four months after that.

1798

French General Louis Alexandre Berthier marched into Rome, proclaimed a Roman Republic, and took Pope Pius VI prisoner — ending over a thousand years of continuous papal temporal authority. The seizure sent shockwaves through Catholic Europe and demonstrated the French Revolution's reach, as Napoleon's armies dismantled ancient institutions with startling speed.

1814

Napoleon personally led 6,000 troops against a Russian corps at Champaubert during the desperate defense of France, smashing the isolated column and capturing its commander, General Olsufiev. The victory was the first in a series of rapid strikes during the Six Days Campaign that temporarily stalled the Allied advance on Paris. Despite tactical brilliance, the strategic situation remained hopeless against overwhelming Coalition numbers.

1862

The Union needed control of North Carolina's sounds — shallow coastal waters perfect for blockade runners. The Confederate "Mosquito Fleet" defended them: eight small gunboats, most armed with a single cannon, some with two. On February 10, 1862, fourteen Union warships cornered them at Elizabeth City. The battle lasted thirty-five minutes. Seven Confederate ships were captured or destroyed. One escaped upriver. The Union lost nobody. North Carolina's coast was now open, cutting off Confederate supply routes from the Atlantic. The South called them mosquitoes because they were supposed to be annoying and hard to swat. They were just small.

HMS Dreadnought launched in February 1906 and made every other warship on Earth obsolete overnight. Ten 12-inch guns, all centerline mounted. Steam turbines instead of reciprocating engines — faster than anything afloat. Britain built her in a year and four months, half the usual time, specifically to shock the world. It worked. Germany, France, Russia, Japan — everyone scrambled to build their own. The global arms race that helped trigger World War I started with a single hull sliding into Portsmouth Harbor. Britain had the world's largest navy when Dreadnought launched. By making their own fleet obsolete, they'd reset the count to zero and dared everyone to catch up.
1906

HMS Dreadnought launched in February 1906 and made every other warship on Earth obsolete overnight. Ten 12-inch guns, all centerline mounted. Steam turbines instead of reciprocating engines — faster than anything afloat. Britain built her in a year and four months, half the usual time, specifically to shock the world. It worked. Germany, France, Russia, Japan — everyone scrambled to build their own. The global arms race that helped trigger World War I started with a single hull sliding into Portsmouth Harbor. Britain had the world's largest navy when Dreadnought launched. By making their own fleet obsolete, they'd reset the count to zero and dared everyone to catch up.

1920

General Jozef Haller cast a platinum ring into the Baltic Sea at Puck, performing a symbolic wedding of Poland to the sea that celebrated the nation's regained coastline after 146 years of partition. The ceremony marked the moment Poland became a maritime nation again under the Treaty of Versailles. The event became a powerful nationalist symbol of Polish sovereignty and territorial completeness.

1930

The Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng planned their uprising for months. They had 40 soldiers ready inside the garrison at Yên Bái. The signal came at midnight on February 10, 1930. The mutiny lasted six hours. French forces crushed it by dawn. The party executed their leader, Nguyễn Thái Học, and twelve others three months later. He was 28. But the mutiny terrified the French enough that they cracked down so hard they destroyed the VNQDD as a political force. That vacuum got filled by a different group with different tactics: the communists under Hồ Chí Minh. The French won the battle and lost the country.

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Fun Facts

Zodiac Sign

♒

Aquarius

Jan 20 -- Feb 18

Air sign. Independent, original, and humanitarian.

Birthstone

Amethyst

Purple

Symbolizes wisdom, clarity, and peace of mind.

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— Boris Pasternak

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