December 10

1520 – Martin Luther burns his copy of the papal bull Exsurge Domine (a denunciation of many of Luther’s 95 theses and an order to recant them) outside Wittenberg’s Elster Gate.

1684 – Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity, derived from Johannes Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, titled –De Motu Corporum In Gyrum – On the motion of bodies in an orbit –  is read to the Royal Society by Edmond Halley. Yes that Halley; the astronomer with a comet named after him.

1768 – The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica is published.

1817 – Mississippi becomes the 20th U.S. state.

1864 – During Sherman’s March to the Sea, Union Army troops reach the outer Confederate defenses of Savannah, Georgia.

1884 – Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published.

1898 – The Treaty of Paris of 1898 is signed, officially ending the Spanish–American War, with Spain relinquishing all claim of sovereignty over, and title to: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

1901 – The first Nobel Prize ceremony is held in Stockholm on the fifth anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death, with Wilhelm Röntgen being awarded the prize in Physics for his discovery of X-rays

1906 – President Theodore Roosevelt is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the mediation of the Russo-Japanese War, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize.

1941 – Imperial Japanese forces, under the command of General Masaharu Homma, land on Luzon island in the Philippines.
The Royal Navy’s Battleship HMS Prince of Wales and Cruiser HMS Repulse are sunk by Imperial Japanese Navy torpedo bombers off British Malaya while attempting to stop Japanese landings there.

1949 – President of the Republic of China,  Chiang Kai-shek and his government is forced to retreat to Taiwan when the communist People’s Liberation Army besieges Chengdu, the last Kuomintang held city in mainland China.

1962 – David Lean’s film “Lawrence of Arabia” premieres at Odeon Leicester Square.

1978 – Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin and President of Egypt Anwar Sadat are jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for agreeing to the Camp David Accords which leads to a peace treaty between the nations.

2021 – A widespread tornado outbreak hits the Central, Midwestern, and Southern regions of the U.S., killing 89 people with most of the fatalities occurring in Kentucky, where a single tornado kills 57 people, and injures hundreds of others.