What happened on November 10 ?

1444 - Battle of Varna: The crusading forces of King Vladislaus III of Varna (aka Ulaszlo I of Hungary and Wladyslaw III of Poland) are crushed by the Turks under Sultan Murad II and Vladislaus is killed.

1619 - René Descartes has the dreams that inspire his Meditations on First Philosophy.

1674 - Anglo-Dutch War: As provided in the Treaty of Westminster, Netherlands cedes New Netherlands to England.

1766 - The last Colonial governor of New Jersey, William Franklin, signs the charter of Queen's College (later renamed Rutgers University).

1775 - American Revolutionary War: The Continental Congress passes a resolution creating the Continental Marines (later renamed the United States Marine Corps) to serve as landing troops for the recently created Continental Navy.

1865 - Major Henry Wirz, the superintendent of a prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, is hanged, becoming the only American Civil War soldier executed for war crimes.

1871 - Henry Morton Stanley locates missing explorer and missionary, Dr. David Livingstone in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika saying "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

1919 - The first national convention of the American Legion is held in Minneapolis, Minnesota (convention ended on November 12).

1926 - In San Francisco, California, a necrophiliac serial killer named Earle Nelson (dubbed "Gorilla Man") kills and then rapes his 9th victim, Mrs. William Edmonds.

1928 - Michinomiya Hirohito is crowned the 124th Emperor of Japan

1938 - Kate Smith, on her weekly radio show, sings Irving Berlin's God Bless America for the first time.

1940 - Walt Disney begins serving as an informer for the Los Angeles office of the FBI; his job is to report back information on Hollywood "subversives".

1942 - World War II: Germany invades Vichy France following French Admiral François Darlan agreement to an armistice with the Allies in North Africa.

1951 - Direct-dial coast-to-coast telephone service begins in the United States.

1954 - US President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicates the USMC War Memorial (Iwo Jima memorial) in Arlington National Cemetery.

1969 - National Educational Television (the predecessor to the Public Broadcasting Service) in the United States debuts the children's television program Sesame Street.

1970 - Vietnam War: Vietnamization - For the first time in five years, an entire week ends with no reports of American combat fatalities in Southeast Asia.

1970 - Soviet Lunar probe Lunokhod 1 launched.

1971 - In Cambodia, Khmer Rouge forces attack the city Phnom Penh and its airport, killing 44, wounding at least 30 and damaging nine airplanes.

1972 - Southern Airways Flight 49 from Birmingham is hijacked and, at one point, is threatened with crashing into the nuclear installation at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After two days, the plane lands in Havana, Cuba, where the hijackers are jailed by Fidel Castro.

1975 - The 729-foot-long freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks during a storm on Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew on board.

1975 - United Nations Resolution 3379: United Nations General Assembly approves a resolution equating Zionism with racism (the resolution was repealed in December 1991).

1989 - After ruling for 33 years , Bulgarian Communist Party leader Todor Zhivkov is replaced by foreign minister Petar Mladenov, who in 1990 changes the party's name to Bulgarian Socialist Party.

1995 - In Nigeria, playwright and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa along with eight others from the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop) are hanged by government forces.

1997 - WorldCom and MCI Communications announce a $37 billion merger (the largest merger in US history at the time).

1997 - A jury in Fairfax, Virginia finds Mir Aimal Kasi guilty of the murder of two CIA employees in 1993.

1997 - The conviction of 19-year-old British au pair Louise Woodward reduced from second-degree murder to involuntary manslaughter and her sentence reduced from life in prison to time served. She had been found guilty less than two weeks earlier in a baby-shaking death.

2001 - The National Alliance holds a protest outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D. C. concerning the attacks of September 11, 2001.