Today in History

May 10

1796 - Napoleon defeats Austria in Battle of Lodi Bridge.

1940 - Winston Churchill forms new British government after prime minister Neville Chamberlain resigns.

1940 - Germany invades Holland, Luxembourg and Belgium.

1957 - Soviets appeal to US and Britain to halt nuclear tests.

1967 - US jets bomb power plants in North Vietnam’s port of Haiphong for first time in Vietnam War.

1981 - Francois Mitterrand is elected President of France.

1990 - India’s worst cyclone in 10 years kills 85 people.

1991 - UN peacekeepers formally declare the Iraq-Kuwait border a demilitarised zone.

1994 - Nelson Mandela sworn in as South Africa’s first black President. 1997 - An earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale hits Iran killing close to 1,000 people.

2005 - Egypt’s parliament passes a constitutional amendment allowing multi-candidate presidential elections for the first time. 2009 - A relentless hail of artillery fire in Sri Lanka’s war zone kills at least 378 civilians including more than 100 children.

2010 - A suicide bomber blows himself up in a crowd in southern city of Iraq and gunmen spray fire on security checkpoints in attacks that claim nearly 100 lives.

2014 - Thirteen workers are killed and 15 are injured when the bus they were travelling in hits a stationary truck on Emirates Road. 2016 - Ali Haidar Gilani, kidnapped son of former Pakistan prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, is freed after three years in an operation in Afghanistan.