10 May History
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.