February 10 Birthday
The Treaty of Paris was signed on February 10, 1763, ending the Seven Years' War, known in America as the French and Indian War. Britain gained Canada, Florida, and all French territory east of the Mississippi. France retained its Caribbean sugar islands, which it valued more than Canada — Voltaire dismissed Canada as "a few acres of snow." Spain, France's ally, ceded Florida to Britain but received Louisiana in compensation. The war had been fought on five continents — the first true world war. The cost nearly bankrupted Britain, and Parliament attempted to recoup it by taxing the American colonies, which led directly to the American Revolution. The Treaty of Paris is the document that made the American Revolution possible. In 1996, Deep Blue, an IBM supercomputer, defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in the first game of a six-game match. Kasparov won the match 4-2, but IBM upgraded Deep Blue and challenged him again in 1997. The rematch was a watershed: Deep Blue won 3.5-2.5. Kasparov accused IBM of cheating, claiming a human grandmaster must have intervened. IBM refused a rematch and dismantled the machine. The victory was not about chess — it was about the moment when computing power exceeded human capacity in a domain that had been considered the pinnacle of human intellect. Kasparov later wrote that he "saw" intelligence in one of Deep Blue's moves, only to learn it had been a bug. Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha on February 10, 1840, at the Chapel Royal in St. James's Palace. She proposed to him — royalty did not wait to be proposed to. They had nine children, who married into royal houses across Europe, earning Victoria the nickname "Grandmother of Europe." Albert organized the Great Exhibition of 1851, championed education reform, and essentially functioned as Victoria's private secretary. When he died of typhoid in 1861, at forty-two, Victoria was devastated. She wore black for the remaining forty years of her life and blamed her son Bertie for Albert's death, because Albert had gone out in the rain to confront Bertie about a scandal. Boris Pasternak, born this day in 1890, wrote Doctor Zhivago in the 1950s. It was rejected by Soviet publishers, so Pasternak sent the manuscript to an Italian publisher. It was published in Italian in 1957 and in English in 1958. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, which the Soviet government forced him to decline. The novel was not published in the Soviet Union until 1988. The 1965 film adaptation, directed by David Lean, was filmed in Spain because the Soviet Union would not allow it. People born on February 10 fall under the zodiac sign of Aquarius. The birthstone is Amethyst and the birth flower is Violet. Historical events on February 10 include 1763: Treaty of Paris ends the Seven Years' War (French and Indian War), 1840: Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert, 1996: IBM's Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov in first game of chess match. Famous people born on February 10 include Boris Pasternak (1890), Bertolt Brecht (1898), Laura Dern (1967).