April 10

April 10 in history:

• 1998: In Northern Ireland, Protestant and Catholic politicians signed the historic Good Friday Agreement, providing for the establishment of a power-sharing government and the disarmament of all paramilitary groups; the agreement was mediated by former U.S. senator George Mitchell.

• 1991: To protect the Kurds, the United States ordered Iraq to cease all military activity north of the 36th parallel, creating a "safe haven" that later came under United Nations administration; at the end of the Persian Gulf War, a Kurdish revolt had been repressed by the Iraqi regime (while the allies stood by), and a huge humanitarian crisis developed as fleeing Kurds were stopped at the Turkish border and trapped in the mountains.

• 1972: The United States, the Soviet Union, and 70 other countries signed the Biological Weapons Convention, agreeing to "never in any circumstances develop, produce, stockpile, or otherwise acquire or retain" weapons for biological warfare; in 2001 the United States refused to sign a protocol to the treaty that would provide for monitoring the ban.

• 1919: Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata was betrayed and gunned down.

• 1877: Reconstruction ended when federal troops were withdrawn from Columbia, South Carolina

• 1847: Joseph Pulitzer, Sr., who became a pioneer of sensational, crusading journalism in the United States, was born in Hungary.