December 10 is the birthday of American poet EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886).

If I can stop one Heart from breaking

I shall not live in vain

If I can ease one Life the Aching

Or cool one Pain

Or help one fainting Robin

Unto his Nest again

I shall not live in Vain.

December 10 is the birthday of French composer OLIVIER MESSIAEN (1908-1992). Synesthesiac, ornithologist (he catalogued all the bird songs of France) and devout Catholic, Messiaen was also inspired by the rich cultures of the East. You can hear all these influences in his massive, indescribable, psychedelic "Turangalila Symphony."

On December 10, 1884, Mark Twain's HUCKLEBERRY FINN was published.

"I said I wouldn’t, and I’ll stick to it. Honest injun I will. People would call me a low down Ablitionist, and despise me for keeping mum—but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t agoing to tell, and I ain’t agoing back there anyways. So now, le’s know all about it."

On December 10, 1896, Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi had its premiere in Paris. A riot broke out at the end of the performance.

"The production's single public performance baffled and offended audiences with its unruliness and obscenity. Considered to be a wild, bizarre and comic play, significant for the way it overturns cultural rules, norms and conventions, it is seen by 20th- and 21st-century scholars to have opened the door for what became known as modernism in the 20th century, and as a precursor to Dadaism, Surrealism and the Theatre of the Absurd." (Wikipedia)