Feb 10 in History
60AD — The ship carrying the Apostle Paul (and some 274 others) to Rome as a prisoner is shipwrecked off the coast of Malta. They all swim to safety and are received “with great kindness”. While on the island, Paul is bitten by a venomous snake but suffers no ill effects, and he heals many sick people. The day is celebrated annually in Malta as The Feast of St Paul’s Shipwreck.
1722 — Black Bart (Bartholomew Roberts), 39,
Welsh pirate, dies at sea off Cape Lopez, Gabon. He is killed when grapeshot strikes him in the throat on the deck of his Royal Fortune in a battle with HMS Swallow. The most successful of the Golden Age of Piracy, as measured by vessels taken, Black Bart captures more than 400 ships in three years (from 1719) off the Americas and West Africa.
1840 — The United Kingdom’s Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha, both 20, marry in the Chapel Royal of St James’s Palace. They have nine children. He dies on December 14 1861, aged 42, and Victoria wears black for the rest of her life. She reigns for 63 years and seven months until her death at 81 on January 22 1901.
1890 — Boris Pasternak, Russian poet and novelist (“Doctor Zhivago”), is born in Moscow.
1933 — Ernie Schaaf (US) collapses in the 13th round of a heavyweight bout against Primo Carnera (Italy) in NYC. Schaaf, 24, dies on the 14th. An autopsy finds “an inflammation of the brain caused by a bad case of influenza” and “recent signs of spinal meningitis”.
1933 — The first singing telegram is delivered by the Postal Telegraph-Cable Company in New York. Considered a good idea but 50 years ahead of its time, it fails to save the company’s telegraph business and it merges with Western Union.
1939 — Japan occupies the island of Hainan, off the coast of French Indochina (Vietnam), as part of a campaign by the Empire of Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War to isolate the Republic of China. 1950 — Mark Spitz, US swimmer (nine Olympic gold medals: two in 1968, seven in 1972), is born in Modesto, California.
1984 — Kenyan soldiers massacre an estimated 10,000 ethnic Somalis at the Wagalla airstrip. Troops descended on the area to reportedly help defuse clan-related conflict. However, according to eyewitness testimony, the Somali men were then taken to the airstrip and prevented from accessing water and food for five days before being executed. 1999 — Four people die on board a MI-8 MTV helicopter which — positioning itself to deliver an airconditioning unit on the roof of a Cape Town building — spins out of control, crashes and bursts into flames after its tail rotor had clipped an advertising board.