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Saturday 10 October 2026
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FILE NO. 10.10 5 specimens · est. 1813-1973

What happened on October 10?

Real photographs, all filed under this date. Name each event before you read on.
Case Timeline 1813-1973 · 160 years
You’re reading an archived file from October 10. Scores here don’t count toward the leaderboard. Today’s file

What happened on October 10

All 5 specimens from this file, spanning 1813 to 1973, with the story behind each photograph.

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  1. An oil painting looking down into a deep excavated pass between steep hillsides, with lines of small locomotives trailing three tall columns of black smoke and tiny figures on the ridge.
    Engineering · 1913

    A president in another country presses a button and two oceans meet

    Woodrow Wilson pressed a telegraph key in Washington on 10 October 1913 and blew up the Gamboa Dike, the last barrier holding the Atlantic and Pacific waters apart in the Panama Canal. The signal travelled about 4,000 miles. Ships did not start using the canal for another ten months.

  2. A stage photograph of a woman in a plain dress holding a crumpled paper, with a man in a light suit and straw hat singing behind her, in front of a tenement set with wooden stairs.
    Culture · 1935

    An opera set in a southern tenement courtyard opens on Broadway

    Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway on 10 October 1935. George Gershwin insisted on a cast of classically trained black singers at a time when that made touring extremely difficult, and the company refused to play the National Theatre in Washington until it dropped its segregated seating, which it did. The run lost money and closed after 124 performances.

  3. A colour official portrait of a man with swept-back grey hair in a blue suit and patterned tie, smiling, with a flag behind his shoulder.
    Politics · 1973

    A vice president resigns and pleads no contest to a tax charge the same afternoon

    Spiro Agnew resigned on 10 October 1973 and appeared in a Baltimore court the same day. He was only the second vice president in American history to resign. Ten months later Richard Nixon resigned too, which meant that by August 1974 the country had a president and a vice president neither of whom had been elected to the job.

  4. A sepia photograph of a line of soldiers in pale uniforms standing to attention outside a colonnaded government building, two large dark flags with rings of stars hanging above them.
    Politics · 1911

    An army mutiny in a river city brings down a dynasty within months

    Soldiers mutinied at Wuchang on 10 October 1911 after a bomb went off by accident in a revolutionary safe house and the police found the membership lists. Province after province declared independence over the following weeks. The last emperor abdicated in February, ending more than two thousand years of imperial rule.

  5. A pastel portrait of an elderly man in a tall black top hat and dark coat, with a white beard and a loosely tied white scarf, against a grey ground.
    Music · 1813

    A composer of twenty-six operas is born in a village inn

    Giuseppe Verdi was born on 10 October 1813 in a village in the Duchy of Parma, the son of an innkeeper. He was rejected by the Milan Conservatory as too old and technically weak. He left most of his fortune to a rest home he built in Milan for retired musicians, and called it the finest work he ever did.