Dec 10 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 10:
1902 – The original Aswan Dam, built by the British to control the Nile flood, was completed in Egypt.
1936 – Britain’s King Edward VIII officially abdicated in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. His brother succeeded him as George VI.
1960 – Sweden’s King Gustav presents Nobel prizes.
1989 – Czechoslovakia’s first government without a Communist majority since 1948 assumed power and President Gustav Husak resigned.
1995 – Israeli soldiers quit the West Bank town of Tulkarm and a first contingent of PLO police moved in to Hebron as part of a handover to Palestinian rule.
1996 – President Nelson Mandela signed into law a new constitution for South Africa, legally entrenching racial equality and consigning apartheid to history’s dustbin.
1998 – The International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia sentenced a former Bosnian Croat paramilitary commander to 10 years in prison, a judgment that was the first to deal exclusively with rape as a war crime.
2000 – Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrived in Saudi Arabia for an indefinite exile after being released from prison by the army which overthrew him.
2002 – Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize.
2005 – U.S. comedian Richard Pryor, who helped transform comedy with biting commentary on race and often profane reflections on his own shortcomings, died. He was 65.
2013 – Uruguay became the first country to legalise the growing, sale and smoking of marijuana.
