May 10
1503 Christopher Columbus discovers the Cayman Islands.
1536 Birth: Thomas Howard, 4th duke of Norfolk, 1st Earl of Northampton, 1536-72 son of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. He will succeed his grandfather, the 3rd Duke, as duke and earl marshal in 1554. As a commissioner appointed to inquire into Scottish affairs, he will be imprisoned from 1569 to 70 for attempting to marry Mary, Queen of Scots; later he will be executed for involvement in a plot with Philip II of Spain to free Mary.
1655 Jamaica is taken by the British after being in Spanish hands for 161 years.
1676 Bacon's Rebellion begins in the New World. "...Bacon's Rebellion was probably one of the most confusing yet intriguing chapters in Jamestown's history. For many years, historians considered the Virginia Rebellion of 1676 to be the first stirring of revolutionary sentiment in America, which culminated in the American Revolution almost exactly one hundred years later. However, in the past few decades, based on findings from a more distant viewpoint, historians have come to understand Bacon's Rebellion as a power struggle between two stubborn, selfish leaders rather than a glorious fight against tyranny. The central figures in Bacon's Rebellion were opposites. Governor Sir William Berkeley, seventy when the crisis began, was a veteran of the English Civil Wars, a frontier Indian fighter, a King's favorite in his first term as Governor in the 1640's, and a playwright and scholar. His name and reputation as Governor of Virginia were well respected. Berkeley's antagonist, young Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., was actually Berkeley's cousin by marriage. Lady Berkeley, Frances Culpeper, was Bacon's cousin. Bacon was a troublemaker and schemer whose father sent him to Virginia in the hope that he would mature. Although disdainful of labor, Bacon was intelligent and eloquent. Upon Bacon's arrival, Berkeley treated his young cousin with respect and friendship, giving him both a substantial land grant and a seat on the council in 1675. Bacon's Rebellion can be attributed to a myriad of causes, all of which led to dissent in the Virginia colony. Economic problems, such as declining tobacco prices, growing commercial competition from Maryland and the Carolinas, an increasingly restricted English market, and the rising prices from English manufactured goods (mercantilism) caused problems for the Virginians. There were heavy English losses in the latest series of naval wars with the Dutch and, closer to home, there were many problems caused by weather. Hailstorms, floods, dry spells, and hurricanes rocked the colony all in the course of a year and had a damaging effect on the colonists..."
1730 Birth: George Ross, US judge, signer of the Declaration of Independence. "George Ross was born in May of 1730 in Newcastle, Delaware, into very large family. His father was a minister, educated at Edenburgh, and the Ross children received a sound classical education at home. George then proceeded to read law at the office of his older brother, John. George attained the Bar in Philadelphia at the age of twenty and established his own practice in Lancaster. As was typical of many gentlemen of the day, his politics were Tory. He served for some twelve years as Crown Prosecutor (attorney general) to Carlisle, until elected to the provincial legislature of his state in 1768. There he came to understand first hand the rising conflict between the colonial assemblies and the Parliament. He was an unabashed supporter of the powers of the former. In 1774 he was elected to the provincial conference that would select delegates to attend the General Congress, and was selected as a representative of Pennsylvania that same year. Ross continued to serve his provincial legislature and was a member of the Committee of Safety for his colony in 1775. In 1776 he was again elected to the Continental Congress, while serving as a provincial legislator, and a Colonel in the Continental Army. That year he also undertook negotiations with the Northwestern Indians on behalf of his colony, and took a seat as vice-president of the first constitutional convention for Pennsylvania. He was reelected to the Continental Congress once more in 1777, but resigned the seat before the close due to poor health. In March of 1779 he was appointed to a judgeship in the Pennsylvania Court of Admiralty. He died in that office, in July of the same year."
1754 Birth: Asmus Jakob Carstens, painter.
1773 The British parliament authorizes the East India Company to export half a million pounds of tea to the American colonies without imposing upon the company the usual duties and tariffs. This measure, which will allow the company to undersell other tea available in the colonies, and will save the East India Company from bankruptcy.
1775 US Revolutionary War: "The 1775 Battle of Ticonderoga occurred early on the morning of May 10, and was the first significant action of the American Revolutionary War. Colonels Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold surprised and captured the small British garrison at Fort Ticonderoga. The Connecticut Committee of Safety had decided that taking Ticonderoga was a good idea. They wrote to Ethan Allen and others, who also liked the idea. James Easton raised 40 volunteers at Pittsfield, Massachusetts for the venture. Allen assembled over a hundred of his Green Mountain Boys. They met on the evening of May 9 at Bennington, and made their plans. Ethan Allen was elected Colonel, with Easton and Seth Warner as his lieutenants. Samuel Herrick was sent to Skenesboro and Asa Douglas to Panton with detachments to secure boats. Allen would march the rest up the lake to a point a few miles below Ticonderoga, to cross there. The council had just parted when Benedict Arnold arrived with orders from the Connecticut committee and insisted that he should be in command. He was generally ignored, but they did let him march up front with Allen. Local volunteers brought their numbers up to about 200. By moonset, they had assembled at Hand's Cove and were ready to cross the lake, but had only two boats secured by Douglas. Eighty-three of the Green Mountain boys piled in with Arnold and Allen and crossed the lake. Douglas went back for the rest. But as dawn approached, fearful of losing the element of surprise, they attacked. Surprising the only sentry on duty at the south gate, they rushed into the fort. Allen and Arnold charged up the stairs into the officer's quarters and demanded surrender, which they got..."
1788 Birth: Augustin-Jean Fresnel, optics pioneer, physicist.
1796 Battle of Lodi: More than 2,000 Austrians are killed or wounded when Napoleon Bonaparte's Army of Italy defeats the Austrians under Baron Beaulieu southeast of Milan.
1822 Birth: August Ritter von Pettenkofen, painter.
1830 Birth: François M. Raoult, French physicist, chemist; Law of Raoult.
1838 Birth: John Wilkes Booth, assassin of Abraham Lincoln.
1840 Mormon leader Joseph Smith moves his band of followers to Illinois to escape the hostilities they experienced in Missouri.
1843 Birth: Benito Pérez Galdós, in Spain, novelist; Fountain of Gold, Nazáarin.
1849 22 people are killed when anti-British sentiments flare into a riot outside the Astor Place Opera House in New York.
1857 The Sepoy Mutiny breaks out in Meerut, triggering the Indian Mutiny against British rule.
1859 Birth: Wilhelm Wrede, a German Bible scholar who will contend that the gospels reflect the theology of the primitive Church rather than the true history of Jesus. Wrede thus contributes his name to the title of Albert Schweitzer's 1906 theological classic: The Quest of the Historical Jesus: From Reimarus to Wrede.
1863 Death: Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson, US Confederate General, from wounds received at Chancellorsville, after being shot in error by his own troops 8 days earlier.
1865 Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy during the US Civil War, is captured by Union forces near Irvinsville, Georgia.
1869 In a remote corner of Utah, the presidents of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads meet and drive a ceremonial last spike into a rail line that connects their railroads and makes transcontinental railroad service possible for the first time in US history. Although travelers will have to take a roundabout journey to cross the country on this railroad system, the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Point, Utah, forever closes a chapter of US history. No longer will western-bound travelers need to take the long and dangerous journey by wagon train, and the west will surely lose some its wild charm with the new connection to the civilized east. The four to six months that generally took pioneers to traverse the United States is now reduced to six days. The event is one of the most significant in US transportation history. As early as 1852, Congress had considered the construction of a transcontinental railroad, but the question became enmeshed in the regional politics of the time. In 1866, starting in Omaha and Sacramento, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads began working toward each other across a northern route, with land grants offered by the government as an incentive for their work. In their eagerness for land, the two lines built right past each other, and the final meeting place had to be renegotiated. On this day, the two lines finally met at Promontory Point, Utah.
1871 France and Germany sign a peace treaty in Frankfurt by which France cedes Alsace-Lorraine.
1872 The first woman nominated to be President of the United States is chosen for the ballot by the National Woman Suffrage Association in New York City: Victoria Claflin Woodhull.
1873 Birth: Carl J. Eldh, Swedish sculptor.
1878 Birth: Gustav Stresemann, Weimar German chancellor 1923, Nobel 1926. "...Stresemann passionately supported Germanic policy both before and during World War I. He believed in force, in authority, in discipline. He argued as early as 1907 for the creation of a strong navy, seeing in it the instrument by which to extend and protect German overseas trade; in 1916, he supported unrestricted submarine warfare; he helped to defeat the government of Bethmann-Hollweg which he thought too temperate; he opposed the Treaty of Versailles. Dismayed, however, to discover Germany's true military position in the fall of 1918, Stresemann found his ideas of the world changing. Disillusioned with an imperial government that believed in force yet did not possess adequate force, and indeed realizing that the policy of force and conquest in itself is ultimately ruinous, he began to see the world as a jigsaw of political and commercial interrelationships, each nation an individual piece in the puzzle and each fitting into another. A month after the armistice of November 11, 1918, Stresemann formed the German People's Party, was elected to the national assembly which gathered at Weimar in 1919 to frame a new constitution, was elected to the new Reichstag in 1920 and spent the next three years in opposition. From August 13 to November 23, 1923, Stresemann was chancellor of a coalition government. In his short-lived ministry he dealt firmly with insurrection in Saxony, restored order in Bavaria after Hitler's Putsch failed, ended the passive resistance of Germans in the Ruhr to the French occupying forces, and began the work of stabilizing Germany's currency. In 1924 Stresemann's successor chose him as his secretary of foreign affairs, an office he was to fill with such distinction under four governments that he was called the greatest master of German foreign policy since Bismarck..."
1886 Birth: Karl Barth, one of the foremost Protestant thinkers of the twentieth century and a vigorous opponent of National Socialism who will strongly oppose the "German Christians" that will support Hitler. In 1935, Barth, born in Switzerland, will be removed from his position at the University of Bonn for refusing to declare an oath of loyalty to to Hitler, and return to the University of Basel where he will publish his most famous work, Kirchliche Dogmatik, one of the central works of modern Protestantism.
1890 Birth: Alfred Jodl, Colonel-General and Chief of staff of the German armed forces supreme command (OKW) from August 23, 1939 until dismissed by Hitler on May 23, 1945. Will be found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg and executed on October 16, 1946.
1898 Birth: Ariel Durant, writer; Story of Civilization.
1902 Birth: Joachim Prinz, author, Rabbi of Berlin, 1926-37.
1908 Birth: Carl Albert, US politician, Democrat, speaker of the House.
1908 Mother's Day is first celebrated in America (Philadelphia).
1910 Death: William Huggins, discoverer of the stellar nature of Andromeda.
1910 Halley's comet makes its closest recorded approach to Earth, sparking speculation of impending disasters.
1915 Birth: Monica Dickens, author, founder of the US Samaritians.
1915 WW1: The first Zeppelin raids on Britain take place.
1915 WW1: Count von Bernstorff offers his condolences for the tragic loss of life upon the sinking of the Lusitania, but this only serves to rub salt into the wounds. (Schlesinger I)
1916 WW1: Germany announces abandonment of its extended submarine campaign. During this period Great Britain, seeking to maintain a blockade, illegally seizes American vessels with such frequency, that Wilson threatens to provide convoys for all American merchant ships to guarantee their neutrality rights.
1917 WW1: Allied merchant ships get destroyer escorts to fend off German attacks in the Atlantic, as the Allied convoy system is officially adopted.
1920 Birth: Richard Adams, English novelist; Watership Down.
1924 J. Edgar Hoover is appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
1927 The Hotel Statler in Boston, Massachusetts captures the technological high-ground on its competition when it becomes the first hotel to install radio headsets in each of its 1,300 rooms.
1930 The Adler Planetarium opens to the public in Chicago, Illinois.
1933 The property of the Social Democratic Party is confiscated on Hitler's order. (Lewy)
1933 The American Jewish Congress stages an anti-Nazi parade through lower Manhattan.
1933 A large anti-Nazi rally is held at the Trocadero in Paris.
1933 German Chancellor Hitler speaks in Berlin: "It is not enough to say that the German economic distress is a phenomenon resulting from a world crisis, from a general economic distress, since, of course, exactly in the same way every other people could plead the same excuse, could adduce the same reason. It is clear that even so this distress cannot have its roots all over the world, those roots must always be found within the life of peoples. And though only one thing is probably true - that these roots are perhaps the same in the case of many peoples - yet one cannot hope to master this distress by the mere statement that the presence of a certain distress is a feature of the age; rather it is clearly a necessity to disclose these roots in the internal life of a single people and to cure the distress there where one can really effect a cure..."
1936 The League of Nations votes to leave its sanctions against Italy in place.
1936 Manuel Azana is elected president of the Spanish Republic.
1940 WW2: Germany invades France and the Low Countries of Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. Counting the ten divisions of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), the Belgian army, and the French army, the Germans are outnumbered and outgunned. Both the Dutch and Belgians fight back after receiving the brunt of the opening offensives. The Dutch mine bridges, block roads, and flood wide areas. Luxembourg, with no defensive forces, is occupied with only scattered civilian resistance. The German code word for the general attack is "Danzig." (Architect)
1940 WW2: The Home Guard is formed in Britain. Originally called the Local Defence Volunteers, they are formed as a last ditch defense against an expected German invasion.
1941 WW2: Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, flies from Augsburg and parachutes into Eaglesham near Glasgow, Scotland, in an apparent attempt to negotiate a peace deal. He is arrested and imprisoned for the rest of the war. Hess will end up serving a life sentence at Spandau prison until his death in 1987. "...Why Rudolf Hess took the sky road to Scotland has never been revealed officially, principally because two leaders of Allied strategy, Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, believed at the time that no useful purpose could be served by the telling. Hess was consigned to the limbo of hush-hush and all attempts to probe the craziest episode of the war were resolutely suppressed. Today, two years after, many Englishmen and a few Americans know exactly why Hess came to England, and most of those in possession of the true story feel that it should now be told. For one thing, it would place before critics of Anglo-American policy towards Soviet Russia the vital and silencing fact that at a difficult moment, when he might have withdrawn his country from the war at Russia's expense, Churchill pledged Britain to continue fighting as a full ally of the newest victim of Nazi duplicity. There would have been some semblance of poetic justice to such a withdrawal-was it not Stalin who set the war in motion by signing a friendship pact with Hitler in 1939? But the British Prime Minister never even considered such action. A few details are still unclear-only British Intelligence and several top-flight officials, know them; a few facts must still be kept dark for reasons of policy. But the essential story can be safely, and usefully, told. It makes one of the most fascinating tales of superintrigue in the annals of international relations. It adds up to a supreme British coup that must have shattered the pride of the Nazis in their diplomacy and their Secret Service. In that domain, it is fair to say, the Hess incident is a defeat equivalent to Stalingrad in the military domain. Rudolf Hess did not "escape" from Germany. He came as a winged messenger of peace..."
1941 WW2: The worst night of the blitz in London sees more than 1,400 people killed, as Germany drops 100,000 bombs.
1945 Russian troops occupy Prague; the Allies capture Rangoon from the Japanese.
1947 Birth: Paul Nicholas Young, architect.
1960 The US nuclear-powered submarine Triton completes its 84-day submerged voyage around the world.
1963 Pope John XXIII receives the Balzan Peace Prize, the first peace prize ever awarded to a pope.
1967 Nurse, journalist and writer Betty Mae Jumper becomes the first woman chair in the Seminole Council in Florida, and the first woman to assume the position of 'Chief' of a federally-recognised tribe. In 1995 she will be inducted into the Women's Hall of Fame of Florida.
1968 The Nam: Preliminary Vietnam peace talks begin in Paris.
1969 The Turtles give a special performance at the White House as guests of Trica Nixon. Mark Volman of the Turtles falls off the stage five times, and stories will circulate concerning members of the group allegedly snorting cocaine on Abraham Lincoln's desk.
1972 The Irish Republic votes in a referendum by 83 percent to join the European Economic Community.
1981 In West Germany, the Social Democrats lose elections in West Berlin for the first time since WW2.
1981 In the second round of the French presidential election, Francois Mitterrand defeats President Valery Giscard D'Estaing.
1985 Death: Chester Gould, cartoonist; Dick Tracy.
1990 The government of China announces the release of 211 dissidents who had been involved in pro-democracy demonstrations a year earlier.
1994 The state of Illinois executes convicted serial killer John Wayne Gacy for the murders of 33 young men and boys.
1995 Terry Nichols is charged in the Oklahoma City bombing.
1995 Britain lifts a 23-year ban on ministerial talks with Sinn Fein, political wing of the Irish Republican Army.
1996 Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao resigns after his Congress Party is mauled in general elections.
1999 Death: Shel Silverstein, author of such acclaimed children's books as A Light in the Attic, The Giving Tree, and Where the Sidewalk Ends, found dead at his home at 66. Two cleaning women discover Silverstein in his bedroom early that morning. The cause of death is not immediately known, but is later determined to be a heart attack. Silverstein, whose output included plays, songs, and adult humor, is best known as an author of sophisticated, and at times macabre, children's books. His reputation is not confined to the US, to many children around the world, he is perhaps the best-loved author of juvenile literature after the incomparable Dr. Seuss.
1999 China breaks off talks on arms control with the United States, and allows demonstrators to hurl stones at the US Embassy in Beijing for a third day to protest NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia.
2001 The public inquiry into British serial killer Doctor Harold Shipman announces that it will investigate the deaths of 466 of his patients.
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