GMT

On this day 10 Apr
837 Comet 1P/837 F1 (Halley) approaches within 0.0334 AUs of Earth

847 St Leo IV begins his reign as Catholic Pope

1516 1st Jewish ghetto established: Venice compels Jews to live in a specific area

1552 Henri II of France occupies Metz

1589 Spanish troops conquer Geertruidenberg

1607 The British colonial expedition that would found Jamestown departs Puerto Rico for the American mainland

1741 War of the Austrian Succession: Prussia defeats Austria in the Battle of Mollwitz

1790 US Patent system forms

1802 Great Trigonometrical Survey begun to survey entire Indian subcontinent, led by William Lambton and the East India Company (completed 1871)

1815 Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies experiences a cataclysmic eruption, one of the most powerful in history, killing around 71,000 people, causes global volcanic winter

1946 1st election for Japanese Parliament

2019 First-ever photo of a black hole announced, taken by The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration in 2017 in galaxy M87, 6.5 billion times the mass of earth, 55 million light-years away

2021 China orders Alibaba pay a record fine of 18.2 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) after anti-trust regulations say it has been acting as a monopoly

2023 The Dalai Lama apologizes for a video showing him asking a boy to suck his tongue, after widespread criticism

Born on this day

1984 Zoe, 1st frozen-embryo child, born in Melbourne Australia

2007 Princess Ariane of the Netherlands, Dutch Princess, daughter of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima, born in The Hague, Netherlands


Joke of the day

The IRS decides to audit Grandpa, and summons him to the IRS office. The auditor was not surprised when Grandpa showed up with his attorney.


The auditor said, "Well, sir, you have an extravagant lifestyle and no full-time employment, Which you explain by saying that you win money gambling. I'm not sure the IRS finds that believable."

"I'm a great gambler, and I can prove it," says Grandpa. "How about a demonstration?"

The auditor thinks for a moment and said, "Okay. Go ahead."

Grandpa says, "I'll bet you a thousand dollars that I can bite my own eye."

The auditor thinks a moment and says, "It's a bet."

Grandpa removes his glass eye and bites it. The auditor's jaw drops.

Grandpa says, "Now, I'll bet you two thousand dollars that I can bite my other eye."

Now the auditor can tell Grandpa isn't blind, so he takes the bet. Grandpa removes his dentures and bites his good eye.

The stunned auditor now realizes he has wagered and lost three grand, with Grandpa's attorney as a witness. He starts to get nervous.

"Want to go double or nothing?" Grandpa asks. "I'll bet you six thousand dollars that I can stand on one side of your desk, and pee into that wastebasket on the other side, and never get a drop anywhere in between."

The auditor, twice burned, is cautious now, but he looks carefully and decides there's no way this old guy could possibly manage that stunt, so he agrees again.

Grandpa stands beside the desk and unzips his pants, but although he strains mightily, he can't make the stream reach the wastebasket on the other side, so he ends up urinating all over the auditor's desk.

The auditor leaps with joy, realizing that he has just turned a major loss into a huge win. But Grandpa's own attorney moans and puts his head in his hands.

"Are you okay?" the auditor asks.

"Not really," says the attorney. "This morning, when Grandpa told me he'd been summoned for an audit, he bet me twenty-five thousand dollars that he could come in here and pee all over your desk and that you'd be happy about it!"