February 10 ...

In 1763 France ceded Canada to England under the Treaty of Paris, which ended the French and Indian War. In 1775 English writer Charles Lamb was born in London, England. In 1837 Russian poet and novelist Alexander S. Pushkin was killed in a duel at age 37. In 1840 Britain's Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. In 1846 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Mormons, began an exodus to the west from Illinois. In 1890 writer Boris Pasternak was born in Moscow, Russia. In 1893 comedian Jimmy Durante was born in New York City. In 1942 RCA Victor presented Glenn Miller and his Orchestra with a "gold record" for their recording of Chattanooga Choo Choo, which had sold more than 1 million copies. In 1949 Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman opened at the Morocco Theatre in New York City. In 1962 the Soviet Union exchanged American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Rudolph Ivanovich Abel, a Soviet spy held by the United States. In 1967 the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, dealing with presidential disability and succession, went into effect. In 1989 Ron Brown was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, becoming the first black man to head a major US political party. In 2005 North Korea boasted publicly for the first time that it possessed nuclear weapons; also on this day, playwright Arthur Miller died in Roxbury, CT, at age 89 on the 56th anniversary of the Broadway opening of his Death of a Salesman.