Reuters Historical Calendar - December 10

London, Dec 9 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 10 in history: 1902 - The original Aswan Dam, built by the British to control the Nile flood, was completed in Egypt.

1936 - Britain's King Edward VIII officially abdicated in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. His brother succeeded him as George VI.

1967 - Otis Redding, one of the most influential soul singers of the 1960s, died in a plane crash in Wisconsin.

1982 - The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea was signed by 119 countries - but not Britain or the United States.

1989 - Czechoslovakia's first government without a Communist majority since 1948 assumed power and President Gustav Husak resigned.

1995 - Israeli soldiers quit the West Bank town of Tulkarm and a first contingent of PLO police moved in to Hebron as part of a handover to Palestinian rule.

1996 - President Nelson Mandela signed into law a new constitution for South Africa, legally entrenching racial equality and consigning apartheid to history's dustbin.

1998 - The International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia sentenced a former Bosnian Croat paramilitary commander to 10 years in prison, a judgment that was the first to deal exclusively with rape as a war crime.

2000 - Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrived in Saudi Arabia for an indefinite exile after being released from prison by the army which overthrew him.

2002 - Former US President Jimmy Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize.

2005 - US comedian Richard Pryor, who helped transform comedy with biting commentary on race and often profane reflections on his own shortcomings, died. He was 65.

REUTERS PB RK1034