10 OCOTOBER

680 Al-Hussein (Al-Ḥusayn ibn) and his followers killed at Karbala by army of Yazid, the Umayyad caliph, on the way to Kufa

1580 After a three day siege, (the Siege of Smerwick) the English Army beheaded over 600 Irish and Papal soldiers and civilians at Dún an Óir in Ireland. Although the defenders eventually surrendered, most of them were then massacred on the orders of the English commander, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Arthur Grey.

1731 The birth of Henry Cavendish, the English physicist and chemist who discovered hydrogen.

1780 Great Hurricane of 1780 kills 20,000 to 30,000 in Caribbean, hitting Barbados first. Atlantic's deadliest recorded hurricane.

1877 William Morris, motoring pioneer and English car manufacturer, was born. The Morris name remained in use until 1984 when British Leyland's Austin Rover Group decided to concentrate on the more popular Austin brand. William Morris (1st Viscount Nuffield), endowed Nuffield College, Oxford in 1937 and the Nuffield Foundation in 1943.

1881 The Savoy Theatre, the first public building to be lit by electricity, opened with a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Patience'.

1899 African-American inventor Issac R. Johnson patents the bicycle frame

1903 Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst formed the Women's Social and Political Union to fight for women's emancipation in Britain.

1928 George V opened the Tyne Bridge. It contained Britain's largest steel arch.

1954 Ho Chi Minh enters Hanoi after withdrawal of French troops

1957 A major radiation leak was detected at the Windscale (now known as Sellafield) nuclear plant in Cumbria after an accident three days earlier. Milk from about 500 square km. of nearby countryside was diluted and destroyed for about a month.

1961 Following a volcanic eruption, the entire population of the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha was evacuated to Britain.

1971 After being sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, London Bridge reopened in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. It was rumoured that the bridge was bought in the belief that it was London's more recognizable Tower Bridge, but this was ardently denied by the purchaser Robert McCulloch, chairman of the McCulloch Oil Corporation.

1975 Elizabeth Taylor got married for the 6th time. She re-married British actor Richard Burton at a remote location in Botswana. They divorced the following year.

1980 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made her memorably defiant speech "U-turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning" at her party's conference in Brighton.

1988 Igor Judge, a British QC, was sworn in as a High Court judge where he would be known as Mr Justice Judge.

1996 A Scottish fisherman found a message in a bottle. It had been thrown in the North Sea in 1914 to chart the currents.

1997 At the British Airways stand at the Conservative Party Conference, former prime minister Margaret Thatcher gave the airline a 'handbagging' by placing a white handkerchief over the model of an aircraft with the new style logo.

1999 Thousands gathered to watch the giant Millennium wheel become the latest landmark on the London skyline.

2010 PM David Cameron said defence spending would fall by 8% over four years. Harrier jump jets, the Navy's flagship HMS Ark Royal and planned Nimrod spy planes would be axed and 42,000 MoD and armed forces jobs cut by 2015. The RAF and navy would lose 5,000 jobs each, the Army 7,000 and the Ministry of Defence 25,000 civilian staff.

2013 The discovery of the first chemical to prevent the death of brain tissue in a neurodegenerative disease was hailed as an exciting and historic moment in medical research although 'More work is needed to develop a drug that could be taken by patients.' Commenting on the research, Professor Roger Morris, from King's College London, said: 'This finding, I suspect, will be judged by history as a turning point in the search for medicines to control and prevent Alzheimer's Disease.'

Famous Birthday's

Giuseppe Verdi
(1813 - 1901)

Fridtjof Nansen
(1861 - 1930)

Helen Hayes
(1900 - 1993)

Famous Deaths

Charlotte Cooper
(1870 - 1966)

Yul Brynner
(1920 - 1985)

Christopher Reeve
(1952 - 2004)

Famous Weddings

1773 American revolution patriot Paul Revere (38) weds Rachel Walker in Boston, Massachusetts

1774 Composer Antonio Salieri (24) weds Therese Helferstorfer

1975 Actress Elizabeth Taylor (43) 6th marriage and remarriage to actor Richard Burton (49)

1987 Paralympian Rick Hansen (30) weds physiotherapist Amanda Reid

1992 Actress Ally Sheedy weds actor David Lansbury

Famous Divorces

1974 Actress Elizabeth Montgomery (41) divorces director-producer William Asher (53) after 11 years of marriage

2008 Actor and comedian Chris Kattan (37) divorces model Sunshine Tutt (32) due to irreconcilable differences after 2 months of marriage