February 10th

St Paul thought to have been shipwrecked at Malta.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak refused to step down or leave the country and instead handed his powers to his vice president.

Two satellites collide in space. Both the U.S. satellite “Iridium 33” and the Russian “Kosmos 2251” were destroyed in the accident.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., kicked off his presidential campaign with a speech at the state house in Springfield, Ill.

North Korea boasted publicly for the first time that it possessed nuclear weapons.

Rapper-producer Kanye West's debut CD, "The College Dropout," was released.

IBM computer Deep Blue becomes the first computer to win a game of chess against a reigning (human) chess champion, Gary Kasparov.

Ron Brown was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, becoming the first African-American to head a major U.S. political party.

The 25th Amendment to the Constitution, dealing with presidential disability and succession, went into effect.

An aircraft carrier collides with a destroyer in Australia, killing 82. Destroyer HMAS Voyager sailed under aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourn's bow, was cut in half and sank.

The Soviet Union exchanged captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Rudolph Abel, a Soviet spy held by the United States.

Glenn Miller received the first ever gold record for selling a million copies of "Chattanooga Choo Choo.".

British battleship HMS Dreadnought launched after only 100 days, rendering all other capital ships obsolete with its revolutionary design.

Henry Morton Stanley departs for the Congo.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints – the Mormons – began an exodus west from Illinois.

Britain's Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg-Gotha.

Russian poet and novelist Alexander Pushkin was killed in a duel.

Simon Bolivar named dictator by the Congress of Peru.

Treaty of Paris signed, ending the French and Indian War. France ceded Canada and all its North American territories east of the Mississippi to Great Britain.

Edmond Halley appointed as the second Astronomer Royal at the Greenwich Observatory.