10 May History


Month:                           Date:     

  • 1285    -    Philip III of Spain is succeeded by Philip IV ("the Fair").
  • 1503    -    Christopher Columbus discovers the Cayman Islands.
  • 1676    -    Bacon's Rebellion begins in the New World.
  • 1773    -    To keep the troubled East India Company afloat, Parliament passes the Tea Act, taxing all tea in the American colonies.
  • 1774    -    Louis XVI succeeds his father Louis XV as King of France.
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  • 1775    -    American troops capture Fort Ticonderoga from the British.
  • 1794    -    Elizabeth, the sister of King Louis XVI, is beheaded.
  • 1796    -    Napoleon Bonaparte wins a brilliant victory against the Austrians at Lodi bridge in Italy.
  • 1840    -    Mormon leader Joseph Smith moves his band of followers to Illinois to escape the hostilities they experienced in Missouri.
  • 1857    -    The Bengal Army in India revolts against the British.
  • 1863    -    General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson succumbs to illness and wounds received during the Battle of Chancellorsville.
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  • 1865    -    Union cavalry troops capture Confederate President Jefferson Davis near Irvinville, Georgia.
  • 1869    -    The Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah.
  • 1859    -    French emperor Napoleon III leaves Paris to join his troops preparing to battle the Austrian army in Northern Italy.
  • 1872    -    Victoria Woodhull becomes first woman nominated for U.S. president.
  • 1917    -    Allied ships get destroyer escorts to fend off German attacks in the Atlantic.
  • 1924    -    J. Edgar Hoover is appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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  • 1928    -    WGY-TV in Schenectady, New York, begins regular television programming.
  • 1933    -    Nazis begin burning books by "unGerman" writers such as Heinrich Mann and Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front.
  • 1940    -    German forces begin a blitzkrieg of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, skirting France's "impenetrable" Maginot Line.
  • 1940    -    Winston Churchill succeeds Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister.
  • 1941    -    England's House of Commons is destroyed during the worst of the London Blitz: 550 German bombers drop 100,000 incendiary bombs.
  • 1960    -    The USS Nautilus completes first circumnavigation of globe underwater.
  • 1994    -    Nelson Mandela is sworn in as South Africa's first black president.

  • 10 May Birthdays

  • 1730    -    George Ross, signer of the Declaration of Independence.
  • 1813    -    Montgomery Blair, lawyer.
  • 1838    -    John Wilkes Booth, actor, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.
  • 1886    -    Karl Barth, Swiss theologian.
  • 1899    -    Fred Astaire (Frederick Austerlitz), American dancer and actor.
  • 1902    -    David O. Selznick, film producer (Gone with the Wind, Rebecca).
  • 1908    -    Carl Albert, U.S. politician.
  • 1920    -    Richard Adams, English novelist (Watership Down).
  • 1937    -    Arthur Kopit, American playwright.
  • 1944    -    Judith Jamison, American ballerina.