Today in History: April 10

2003: Haiti officially recognized Vodou as a religion.

2001: The Netherlands passed a bill permitting euthanasia, the first such national law in the world.

1988: After taking a decade to build, the Seto Great Bridge, spanning the Inland Sea in Japan, was opened to traffic.

1981: Imprisoned Irish Republican Army hunger striker Bobby Sands is elected to the British Parliament.

1974: Yitzhak Rabin replaces resigning Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir.

1973: Pakistan adopted its third constitution, shifting the role of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto from president to prime minister.

1972: The development, production, and stockpiling of biological weapons were outlawed by the Biological Weapons Convention, signed by more than 150 countries.

1971: The American table tennis team arrives in China.

1957: Aliko Dangote (the 67th richest man in the world and the richest man in Africa) was born
1953: House of Wax, the first 3-D movie, is released.

1947: Jackie Robinson becomes the first black to play major league baseball as he takes the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

1945: In their second attempt to take the Seelow Heights, near Berlin, the Red Army launches numerous attacks against the defending Germans. The Soviets gain one mile at the cost of 3,000 men killed and 368 tanks destroyed.

1941: U.S. troops occupy Greenland to prevent Nazi infiltration.

1938: In a controlled plebiscite in Austria this day in 1938, soon after Adolf Hitler's invasion of the country, 99.7 percent of Austrians approved the Anschluss (German: “Union”)—the political unification of Austria and Germany.

1932: Paul von Hindenburg is elected president in Germany.

1930: The first synthetic rubber is produced.

1925: F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes The Great Gatsby.

1925: The first government led by French premier Édouard Herriot, a Radical Party leader who had been put into office by the left-wing coalition Cartel des Gauches, fell.

1912: The Titanic begins her maiden voyage which will end in disaster.

1902: South African Boers accept British terms of surrender.

1866: The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is formed.

1865: At Appomattox Court, Va, General Robert E. Lee issues his last orders to the Army of Northern Virginia.

1862: Union forces begin the bombardment of Fort Pulaski in Georgia along the Tybee River.

1809: Austria declares war on France and her forces enter Bavaria.

1790: The U.S. patent system is established.

1583: Hugo Grotius, the Dutch jurist and scholar whose legal masterpiece, De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625; On the Law of War and Peace), was one of the first great contributions to modern international law, was born.