This day in history

On 10 March, 1945, in the second day of raids, 300 American bombers drop almost 2,000 tons of incendiaries on Tokyo, destroying large portions of the Japanese capital and killing 100,000 civilians.

The attack was part of a U.S. effort to force Japan into surrender in the final months of World War II. The conflagration caused by the incendiary bombs quickly engulfed Tokyo's wooden residential structures, creating a firestorm that replaced oxygen with lethal gases, superheated the atmosphere, and caused hurricane-like winds that blew a wall of fire across the city. As a result of the attack, 10 square miles of eastern Tokyo were entirely obliterated and an estimated 250,000 buildings were destroyed.

Over the next nine days, U.S. bombers flew similar missions against Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe. In August, U.S. atomic attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki finally forced Japan's surrender.

Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft is sentenced to death by an Iraqi military court for espionage. Daphne Parish, a British nurse accused of helping him, is sentenced to 15 years in prison.

In Cuba, Fulgencio Batista stages a coup and takes full control of the country.
 

The Romans sink the Carthaginian fleet at the Battle of the Aegates Islands, ending the first Punic War.