Events on June 10 54
Year 671
Emperor Tenji of Japan introduces a water clock (clepsydra) called Rokoku. The instrument, which measures time and indicates hours, is placed in the capital of Ōtsu.
Year 1190
Third Crusade: Frederick I Barbarossa drowns in the river Saleph while leading an army to Jerusalem.
Year 1523
Copenhagen is surrounded by the army of Frederick I of Denmark, as the city won't recognise him as the successor of Christian II of Denmark.
Year 1539
Council of Trent: Pope Paul III sends out letters to his bishops, delaying the Council due to war and the difficulty bishops had traveling to Venice.
Year 1692
Salem witch trials: Bridget Bishop is hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem, Massachusetts, for "certaine Detestable Arts called Witchcraft & Sorceries".
Year 1786
A landslide dam on the Dadu River created by an earthquake ten days earlier collapses, killing 100,000 in the Sichuan province of China.
Year 1793
The Jardin des Plantes museum opens in Paris. A year later, it becomes the first public zoo.
Year 1793
French Revolution: Following the arrests of Girondin leaders, the Jacobins gain control of the Committee of Public Safety installing the revolutionary dictatorship.
Year 1805
First Barbary War: Yusuf Karamanli signs a treaty ending the hostilities between Tripolitania and the United States.
Year 1829
The first Boat Race between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge takes place on the Thames in London.
Year 1861
American Civil War: Battle of Big Bethel: Confederate troops under John B. Magruder defeat a much larger Union force led by General Ebenezer W. Pierce in Virginia.
Year 1864
American Civil War: Battle of Brice's Crossroads: Confederate troops under Nathan Bedford Forrest defeat a much larger Union force led by General Samuel D. Sturgis in Mississippi.
Year 1871
Sinmiyangyo: Captain McLane Tilton leads 109 US Marines in a naval attack on Han River forts on Kanghwa Island, Korea.
Year 1878
League of Prizren is established, to oppose the decisions of the Congress of Berlin and the Treaty of San Stefano, as a consequence of which the Albanian lands in Balkans were being partitioned and given to the neighbor states of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece.
Year 1886
Mount Tarawera in New Zealand erupts, killing 153 people and burying the famous Pink and White Terraces. Eruptions continue for three months creating a large, 17 km long fissure across the mountain peak.
Year 1916
The Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire was declared by Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca.
Year 1918
The Austro-Hungarian battleship SMS Szent István sinks off the Croatian coast after being torpedoed by an Italian MAS motorboat; the event is recorded by camera from a nearby vessel.
Year 1935
Dr. Robert Smith takes his last drink, and Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Akron, Ohio, United States, by him and Bill Wilson.
Year 1935
Chaco War ends: A truce is called between Bolivia and Paraguay who had been fighting since 1932.
Year 1940
World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounces Italy's actions in his "Stab in the Back" speech at the graduation ceremonies of the University of Virginia.
Year 1942
World War II: Nazis burn the Czech village of Lidice in reprisal for the killing of Reinhard Heydrich.
Year 1944
World War II: Six hundred forty-two men, women and children massacred at Oradour-sur-Glane, France.
Year 1944
World War II: In Distomo, Boeotia, Greece, 218 men, women and children are massacred by German troops.
Year 1944
In baseball, 15-year-old Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds becomes the youngest player ever in a major-league game.
Year 1957
John Diefenbaker leads the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to a stunning upset in the Canadian federal election, 1957, ending 22 years of Liberal Party government.
Year 1963
The Equal Pay Act of 1963, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex, was signed into law by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program.
Year 1964
United States Senate breaks a 75-day filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, leading to the bill's passage.
Year 1977
James Earl Ray escapes from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Petros, Tennessee. He is recaptured three days later.
Year 1980
The African National Congress in South Africa publishes a call to fight from their imprisoned leader Nelson Mandela.
Year 1990
British Airways Flight 5390 lands safely at Southampton Airport after a blowout in the cockpit causes the captain to be partially sucked from the cockpit. There are no fatalities
Year 1991
Eleven-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard is kidnapped in South Lake Tahoe, California; she would remain a captive until 2009.
Year 1994
China conducts a nuclear test for DF-31 warhead at Area C (Beishan), Lop Nur, its prominence being due to the Cox Report.
Year 1997
Before fleeing his northern stronghold, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot orders the killing of his defense chief Son Sen and 11 of Sen's family members.
Year 1999
Kosovo War: NATO suspends its airstrikes after Slobodan Milošević agrees to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo.
Year 2002
The first direct electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans is carried out by Kevin Warwick in the United Kingdom.
Year 2016
Former The Voice contestant Christina Grimmie is fatally shot in Orlando, Florida following a concert; she died from her injuries at the age of 22.