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Today in History, December 10th

On December 10, 1948, the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Plus the 1898 Treaty of Paris and the first Nobel Prizes.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 3 min read Sources checked

Published December 10, 2025 · Last updated November 10, 2026

December 10 is best known as the day in 1948 when the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris. It is also the date of the 1898 Treaty of Paris that ended the Spanish-American War, and since 1901 it has been the day the Nobel Prizes are handed out.

The big story: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

Three years after World War II ended, the young United Nations tried something no group of governments had done before: write down a list of rights that belong to every person, everywhere. The drafting committee was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, and its members came from very different legal and cultural traditions. On December 10, 1948, meeting in Paris, the General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as resolution 217 A. Eight countries abstained. Not one voted no. The document was not a treaty, so it bound no one by law. Its power came from being a shared yardstick. It went on to inspire more than 70 human rights treaties, and it has been translated into more than 500 languages. One small edit says a lot about how it was made: India’s Hansa Mehta is credited with changing Article 1 from “all men” to “all human beings.” December 10 is now marked as Human Rights Day.

More events on December 10

Year	What happened
1520	Martin Luther threw the papal bull threatening him with excommunication into a bonfire outside Wittenberg’s Elster gate, along with books of church law.
1817	Mississippi was admitted to the Union as the 20th state.
1869	Wyoming Territory’s governor, John A. Campbell, signed a law giving women the right to vote, the first such law in the U.S.
1898	The U.S. and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the Spanish-American War. Spain gave up Cuba and ceded Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to the U.S.
1901	The first Nobel Prizes were awarded. Wilhelm Röntgen, discoverer of X-rays, took the physics prize, and Henry Dunant and Frédéric Passy shared the peace prize.
1964	Martin Luther King Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize at the University of Oslo.
1982	The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea opened for signature in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Delegations signed it 119 times on the first day.
1996	Nelson Mandela signed South Africa’s new constitution into law at Sharpeville. It took effect in February 1997.
2007	Cristina Fernández de Kirchner took office as Argentina’s first elected woman president, succeeding her husband, Néstor Kirchner.
2009	President Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize at Oslo City Hall.

Born on December 10

1787: Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, educator who founded the first school for deaf students in the U.S.
1815: Ada Lovelace, English mathematician often called the first computer programmer.
1830: Emily Dickinson, the Amherst, Massachusetts, poet whose short, startling verses changed American poetry.
1851: Melvil Dewey, librarian who created the Dewey Decimal Classification.