1813        Apr 10, Joseph-Louis Lagrange (b.1736), Italian-born mathematician, died in Paris. He is considered to be the greatest mathematician of the eighteenth century.

1882        Apr 10, Matson founded his shipping company with service between San Francisco and Hawaii.

1887        Apr 10, President Abraham Lincoln was re-buried with his wife in Springfield, Il.

1947         Apr 10, Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey announced he had purchased the contract of Jackie Robinson from the Montreal Royals. John Sengstacke, black publisher of the Chicago Defender, was instrumental in persuading Mr. Rickey in his decision. Jackie Robinson became the first black to play major league baseball as he took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. In spite of intense pressure and hostility, Robinson’s athletic abilities earned him the Rookie of the Year Award in 1947.

1956        Apr 10, In Alabama singer Nat Cole was attacked on stage at the Birmingham Municipal Auditorium by a small group of white supremacists. Six local men were arrested for the attack.

1959        Apr 10, Japan’s Crown Prince Akihito married a commoner, Michiko Shoda.

1968        Apr 10, President Johnson replaced General Westmoreland with General Creighton Abrams in Vietnam

1989        Apr 10, In Ohio Jeffrey Lundgren (b.1950), a self-proclaimed prophet, led his cult in planning and executing murders of the Avery family in order to bring about a prophecy he interpreted from the Old Testament. Lundgren was convicted of five counts of murder and executed on October 24, 2006 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio.

1990        Apr 10, Teddy Wang Tei-huei (57), Hong Kong real estate tycoon, was kidnapped for a 2nd time. Abductors demanded $60 million. His wife Nina Wang paid a $34 million installment, but it was too late. His body was never found. Wang was declared legally dead in 1999.

1995        Apr 10, Sen. Bob Dole launched his third bid for the White House in Topeka, Kansas.

1996        Apr 10, President Clinton vetoed a bill that would have outlawed a technique used to end pregnancies in their late stages.

1997        Apr 10, Michael Dorris (52), writer, committed suicide. His books included “The Broken Cord” (1989), an account of his life raising adopted son Abel, who was diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome.

1998        Apr 10, The Russian Parliament rejected Pres. Yeltsin’s nominee, Sergei Kiriyenko, for prime minister 186 to 143. Yeltsin renominated Kiriyenko and another vote must take place within a week. In a speech to the Duma Kiriyenko said that economic growth had stopped.

1999        Apr 10, In Russia Prime Minister Primakov appealed to the lower house of the Duma to drop impeachment proceedings against Pres. Yeltsin.

2001        Apr 10, Pres. Bush met with Jordan’s King Abdullah and both agreed that ending violence in the Middle East was the main goal for the region.

2004        Apr 10, Pres. Bush signed into law a bill that let companies reduce the required contributions to their defined-benefit pension plans by more than $80 billion over the next 2 years.

2005        Apr 10, Steve Vaught (39) left his San Diego, Ca., home on a walking trip to New York in an effort to loose some of his 400 lbs. By July he was in Arizona and down to 350 lbs. A year later he was in Ohio with less than 400 miles to NYC. His weight was down to 292. He completed his walk at 178th and Broadway in New York City on May 9, 2006; he had lost approximately 100 lbs.

2006        Apr 10, Mark Vaile, Australia’s trade minister, said he did not read a string of diplomatic cables warning that the country’s monopoly wheat exporter allegedly was paying multimillion-dollar kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime.

2006        Apr 10, French President Jacques Chirac threw out part of a youth labor law that triggered massive protests and strikes, bowing to intense pressure from students and unions and dealing a blow to his loyal premier in a bid to end the crisis.

2007        Apr 10, Peter Brixtofte (57), the free-spending Danish mayor of Hilleroed (1986-2002), was convicted of abusing his office and sentenced to two years in prison. He had became hugely popular for offering free vacations to retirees and computers to school children.

2007        Apr 10, South African President Thabo Mbeki arrived in Khartoum to join the international push for UN peacekeepers in Darfur, amid fears of a regional spillover after clashes between Sudan and Chad. Officials said the UN, the African Union and the Sudanese government have reached agreement to beef up the African force in Sudan’s violence-wracked Darfur region with UN troops, police and equipment.

2008        Apr 10, In Virginia a jury convicted Rev. James Bevel (71), a noted civil rights figure, of incest after concluding he had sex with his teenage daughter 15 years ago. His had daughter testified that Bevel had begun molesting her at age 6.

2008        Apr 10, In San Francisco Luis Solari (38) was shot and killed in an apparent incident of road rage. His 2 young sons survived as his car spun out of control before stopping on I-280.

2009        Apr 10, In Arizona Samuel Valdivia (18), a high school student, was caught with his math teacher, Tamara Hofmann (48) in her bedroom, and was stabbed to death by boyfriend Sixto Balbuena (20), who was himself a former student of hers. Balbuena, a Navy sailor on leave from California, was arrested on a charge of second-degree murder after police found him covered in blood and told them about the killing.

2009        Apr 10, Fiji’s Pres. Ratu Josefa Iloilo (88) suspended the constitution of his troubled South Pacific country and fired the judges who had declared its military government illegal.

2009        Apr 10, In Moscow Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and PM Vladimir Putin. Al-Maliki told Medvedev in the Kremlin that Iraq is interested in Russian investment, and Putin said at a joint news conference that talks focused on oil and gas cooperation.

2010        Apr 10, Polish President Lech Kaczynski (60) and some of the country’s highest military and civilian leaders died when the presidential plane crashed as it came in for a landing in thick fog in western Russia, killing 96. The 26-year-old Tupolev was taking the president, his wife and staff to events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Katyn forest of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police. On board were the army chief of staff, the navy chief commander, and heads of the air and land forces. Also killed were the national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, Olympic Committee head, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers.

2013        Apr 10, President Barack Obama sent Congress a $3.8 trillion spending blueprint that strives to achieve a “grand bargain” to tame runaway deficits, raising taxes on the wealthy and trimming popular benefit programs including Social Security and Medicare.

2014        Apr 10, Richard Hoggart (95), a distinguished cultural historian and a significant witness in the 1960 court case that ended British censorship of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” died