Today in History....October 10

On this day in …

* 732, Battle of Tours: Near Poitiers, France, leader of the Franks, Charles Martel and his men, defeat a large army of Moors, stopping the Muslims from spreading into Western Europe. The governor of Cordoba, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, is killed during the battle

* 1582, because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain

* 1631, a Saxon army takes over Prague

* 1780, The Great Hurricane of 1780 kills 20,000-30,000 in the Caribbean

* 1845, in Annapolis, Maryland, the Naval School (later renamed the United States Naval Academy) opens with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors

* 1911, Wuchang Uprising leads to the demise of Qing Dynasty, the last Imperial court in China, and the founding of the Republic of China

* 1913, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson triggers the explosion of the Gamboa Dike thus ending construction on the Panama Canal

* 1933, a United Airlines Boeing 247 is destroyed by sabotage, the first such proven case in the history of commercial aviation

* 1938, the Munich Agreement cedes the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany

* 1967, the Outer Space Treaty, signed on January 27 by more than sixty nations, enters into force

* 1971, sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, the London Bridge reopens in Lake Havasu City, Arizona

* 1973, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, accused of accepting bribes, pleaded no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion, and resigned his office

* 1985, U.S. fighter jets forced an Egyptian plane carrying the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro to land in Italy,

where the gunmen, practitioners of that "religion of peace", were taken into custody

* 2002, House voted 296-133 to give President Bush the broad authority he'd sought to use military force against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, with or without U.N. support. ALSO: Two executives who'd overseen WorldCom's financial record-keeping pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a federal probe of the company's multibillion-dollar accounting scandal

* 2006, the Bush administration rejected anew direct talks with North Korea in the wake of the communist country's nuclear test, and suggested it was possible the test was something less than it appeared