28 BC The first recorded observation of a sunspot was made on May 10, 28BC by Han Dynasty astronomers during the reign of Emperor Cheng of Han. The observation was recorded in the Book of Han, an official history of the Han Dynasty. The book states that on May 10, 28 BC, "the sun was yellow at its rising and a black vapor as large as a coin was observed at its center."
70AD Both Matthew and Luke in their Gospels recorded Christ's warning to the disciples of the future destruction of Jerusalem. On May 10, 70 AD, Titus, the son of Emperor Vespasian, opened a full-scale assault on Jerusalem. The Jews fought with great heroism but by early autumn 70 AD all of Jerusalem including the temple was almost completely destroyed and most of the Jews who survived were scattered throughout the Roman Empire.
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| Sunspot |
70AD Both Matthew and Luke in their Gospels recorded Christ's warning to the disciples of the future destruction of Jerusalem. On May 10, 70 AD, Titus, the son of Emperor Vespasian, opened a full-scale assault on Jerusalem. The Jews fought with great heroism but by early autumn 70 AD all of Jerusalem including the temple was almost completely destroyed and most of the Jews who survived were scattered throughout the Roman Empire.
214 The Roman Emperor Claudius Gothicus was born on May 10, 214. Claudius abolished the institution of marriage for many, as he felt that husbands did not make good soldiers, enforcing the new law with the utmost rigor. Bishop Valentine considered such a policy against the spirit of God and of human nature. He secretly married Christians, but when his "crime" was discovered while on a temporary stay in Rome, Bishop Valentine was arrested, imprisoned, and brutally clubbed to death.
1606 The English writer and statesman Francis Bacon waited until his mid 40s before marrying 13-year-old Alice Barnham on May 10, 1606. The wedding took place in St Marylebone's Chapel, which was located in a village to the north of London, with the reception at the Strand estate. Their marriage led to no children. In 1625, Bacon became estranged from his wife, apparently believing her of adultery with one John Underhill. He rewrote his will, revoking his legacy to Alice.
1669 The English diarist Samuel Pepys often wrote about the lace used for his, his wife's, and his acquaintances' clothing, and on May 10, 1669, noted that he intended to remove the gold lace from the sleeves of his coat "as it is fit [he] should", possibly in order to avoid charges of ostentatious living.
1752 Benjamin Franklin conceived the idea of drawing down lightening from the clouds by means of a rod. In 1750 he published a proposal for an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity by flying a kite in a storm that appeared capable of becoming a lightning storm. On May 10, 1752, Thomas-François Dalibard of France conducted Franklin's experiment using an iron rod instead of a kite, and he extracted electrical sparks from a cloud.
1774 When Louis XVI succeeded to the French throne on May 10, 1774, he was 19 years old. A weak and idle ruler, he allowed the reactionary forces of the aristocracy, led by his wife Queen Marie Antoinette, to plunge France into economic crisis and political turmoil. After the French Revolution broke, Louis was guillotined. He was the only French King in history to be executed, and his death ended monarchical rule in France.
1801 Tripoli (now in Libya) declared war on the United States on May 10, 1801, beginning the First Barbary War and the new American nation’s first foreign conflict. The war was incited by American refusal to continue payment of tribute to the piratical rulers of the North African Barbary States of Algiers, Tunis, Morocco, and Tripoli; this practice had been customary among European nations. The capture of the Tripolitan city of Derna four years later ended the war.
1818 American silversmith and soldier Paul Revere died on May 10, 1818 in Boston, and was buried in the Granary Burying Ground. The engraver acquired a reputation as a designer and maker of elegant silverware and his tea sets served the Boston aristocracy for a century. However, Revere is remembered today for his midnight ride from Boston to Concord to warn the colonial militia of the approach of British troops on April 18, 1775.
1824 In 1824 the British Parliament voted to spend £57,000 purchasing 38 pictures from insurance broker and patron of the arts, John Julius Angerstein, to establish a British national collection of paintings. The National Gallery opened in Angerstein's former townhouse on No. 100 Pall Mall later in the year on May 10, 1824. The present building in Trafalgar Square, the third to house the National Gallery, opened in 1838.
1838 John Wilkes Booth was born in Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland on May 10, 1838. His parents were the noted British Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth and his mistress Mary Ann Holmes. Booth’s brother, Edwin Booth, was the greatest American actor of the nineteenth century. Booth himself became a successful actor, earning over £20,000 a year. John Wilkes Booth shot U.S. president Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, in Washington, D.C. Lincoln died the next morning.
1841 American publisher James Gordon Bennett, Jr. was born on May 10, 1841. A successful publisher of the New York Herald, he sponsored explorers including Henry Morton Stanley's trip to Africa to find David Livingstone, and the ill-fated USS Jeannette attempt on the North Pole. An outlandish international playboy, he’d turn up in restaurants drunk and cause havoc. Bennett's exploits gave rise to the exclamation ‘Gordon Bennett!’, to express shock.
1849 The Swedish nightingale, Jenny Lind, gave up the operatic stage in 1849. Her last opera performance was on May 10, 1849 in Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable (Robert the Devil), a fitting conclusion considering it was also the opera she was most famous for.
1606 The English writer and statesman Francis Bacon waited until his mid 40s before marrying 13-year-old Alice Barnham on May 10, 1606. The wedding took place in St Marylebone's Chapel, which was located in a village to the north of London, with the reception at the Strand estate. Their marriage led to no children. In 1625, Bacon became estranged from his wife, apparently believing her of adultery with one John Underhill. He rewrote his will, revoking his legacy to Alice.
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| Engraving of Alice Barnham |
1669 The English diarist Samuel Pepys often wrote about the lace used for his, his wife's, and his acquaintances' clothing, and on May 10, 1669, noted that he intended to remove the gold lace from the sleeves of his coat "as it is fit [he] should", possibly in order to avoid charges of ostentatious living.
1752 Benjamin Franklin conceived the idea of drawing down lightening from the clouds by means of a rod. In 1750 he published a proposal for an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity by flying a kite in a storm that appeared capable of becoming a lightning storm. On May 10, 1752, Thomas-François Dalibard of France conducted Franklin's experiment using an iron rod instead of a kite, and he extracted electrical sparks from a cloud.
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| Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky c. 1816, by Benjamin West |
1774 When Louis XVI succeeded to the French throne on May 10, 1774, he was 19 years old. A weak and idle ruler, he allowed the reactionary forces of the aristocracy, led by his wife Queen Marie Antoinette, to plunge France into economic crisis and political turmoil. After the French Revolution broke, Louis was guillotined. He was the only French King in history to be executed, and his death ended monarchical rule in France.
1801 Tripoli (now in Libya) declared war on the United States on May 10, 1801, beginning the First Barbary War and the new American nation’s first foreign conflict. The war was incited by American refusal to continue payment of tribute to the piratical rulers of the North African Barbary States of Algiers, Tunis, Morocco, and Tripoli; this practice had been customary among European nations. The capture of the Tripolitan city of Derna four years later ended the war.
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| Attack on Derna By Colonel Charles Waterhouse |
1818 American silversmith and soldier Paul Revere died on May 10, 1818 in Boston, and was buried in the Granary Burying Ground. The engraver acquired a reputation as a designer and maker of elegant silverware and his tea sets served the Boston aristocracy for a century. However, Revere is remembered today for his midnight ride from Boston to Concord to warn the colonial militia of the approach of British troops on April 18, 1775.
1824 In 1824 the British Parliament voted to spend £57,000 purchasing 38 pictures from insurance broker and patron of the arts, John Julius Angerstein, to establish a British national collection of paintings. The National Gallery opened in Angerstein's former townhouse on No. 100 Pall Mall later in the year on May 10, 1824. The present building in Trafalgar Square, the third to house the National Gallery, opened in 1838.
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| Inside the National Portrait Gallery, 2008. By Herry Lawford from London |
1838 John Wilkes Booth was born in Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland on May 10, 1838. His parents were the noted British Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth and his mistress Mary Ann Holmes. Booth’s brother, Edwin Booth, was the greatest American actor of the nineteenth century. Booth himself became a successful actor, earning over £20,000 a year. John Wilkes Booth shot U.S. president Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, in Washington, D.C. Lincoln died the next morning.
1841 American publisher James Gordon Bennett, Jr. was born on May 10, 1841. A successful publisher of the New York Herald, he sponsored explorers including Henry Morton Stanley's trip to Africa to find David Livingstone, and the ill-fated USS Jeannette attempt on the North Pole. An outlandish international playboy, he’d turn up in restaurants drunk and cause havoc. Bennett's exploits gave rise to the exclamation ‘Gordon Bennett!’, to express shock.
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| James Gordon Bennett Jr. |
1849 The Swedish nightingale, Jenny Lind, gave up the operatic stage in 1849. Her last opera performance was on May 10, 1849 in Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable (Robert the Devil), a fitting conclusion considering it was also the opera she was most famous for.
1863 General Stonewall Jackson died on May 10, 1863. Jackson’s left arm was shattered during the Battle of Chancellorsville by friendly fire and was amputated the next day. Weakened by his wounds, he died of pneumonia eight days later. Jackson had two separate burial sites - one for his amputated left arm (Fredericksburg, Virginia) and one for the rest of his body (Lexington, Virginia).
1869 The first American transcontinental railway was completed west of the Rockies at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869 when the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads met. The Central Pacific Railroad President Leland Stanford ceremonially drove the gold "Last Spike" with a silver hammer at Promontory Summit. It was a moment of vast symbolic significance as with this transcontinental link completed, the American nation was now a single unit from coast to coast.
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| At the ceremony for the driving of the "Last Spike" at Promontory Summit |
1871 The capture of Paris by Prussian forces, led to French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the establishment of the German Empire. The Treaty of Frankfurt signed on May 10, 1871, ended the conflict. The treaty gave the German Empire some mainly German speaking regions, which became the Imperial territory of Alsace-Lorraine.
1886 Karl Barth was born on May 10, 1886, in Basel, Switzerland. One of the great Protestant theologians of the twentieth century, Barth is known for his unfinished multi-volume theological summa the Church Dogmatics (published between 1932–1967), as well as a number of Biblical commentaries, most famously on the Book of Romans. He was heavily involved in the authorship of the anti-Nazi Barmen declaration in 1934.
1893 The New York Central and Hudson River Railroad No. 999 was built for high speed and was the first steam locomotive in the world to travel over 100 mph. It was officially clocked by railroad officials when it ran a world record of 112.5 mph on May 10, 1893.
1899 Fred Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska on May 10, 1899. Fred began dancing at the age of four. Fred formed a child act with his sister, Adele, that became popular at the time.Their first act was called "Juvenile Artists Presenting an Electric Musical Toe-Dancing Novelty." Adele eventually married, leaving Astaire to begin his solo career.
1902 The Society of American Magicians, the oldest fraternal magic organization in the world, was founded on May 10, 1902 in the back room of Martinka's magic shop in New York. The founders stated that the goal of the organization was to elevate and advance the art of magic.
1904 Journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley died of pleurisy at his Richmond, London terrace home on May 10, 1904. He was famous for his exploration of central Africa and his search for missionary and explorer David Livingstone. His grave, in the graveyard of St. Michael's Church in Pirbright, Surrey, is marked by a large piece of granite.
1908 In 1907 Anna Jarvis of Grafton, West Virginia decided to commemorate her mother's life by inviting a number of friends to her home and celebrate their mothers. The following year, on May 10, 1908, Anna persuaded her church, Andrews Methodist Church, to hold the first ever official Mother's Day service where her own mother had once taught Sunday school. The custom caught on and spread rapidly and in 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day.
1934 Marie, Cecile, Yvonne, Emilie and Annette Dionne were the first quintuplets known to survive infancy. They were born near Callender, Ontario, Canada to Oliva and Elzire Dionne on May 10, 1934. The Dionne quintuplets gained international attention and became a media sensation during the 1930s. Their birth was unexpected, and their survival was seen as a medical miracle at the time. The quintuplets were placed under the care of the Canadian government and became a major tourist attraction, with thousands of visitors coming to see them at the specially built Quintland theme park.
1937 Britain’s first frozen food was asparagus. Made by Smedley's of Wisbech, it went on sale on May 10, 1937. One 1937 advert promised; "We can give you beautiful green-tipped spears of Evesham Asparagus at Christmas, and they are as fresh as the morning they were cut."
1940 When Neville Chamberlain became UK Prime Minister in 1937, he determined to pursue a policy of appeasing Nazi Germany. When Adolf Hitler invaded Austria and the Sudetenland (a part of Czechoslovakia), Chamberlain tried to keep the peace. However, his policy of appeasement toward Hitler failed to prevent the outbreak of World War II. He resigned on May 10, 1940 following the defeat of the British forces in Norway.
1940 When Britain invaded Iceland on May 10, 1940 during World War II, they brought four battleships and 746 Royal Marines against Iceland's 60 police officers and 300 untrained reservists. The invasion was carried out because the British Government feared that the island would be used by Germany. There was only one casualty, a Royal Marine who committed suicide en route to Iceland.
1940 The first German bombs of World War II to fall on England were dropped on May 10, 1940, targeting the Kentish villages of Chilham and Petham. This event marked the beginning of the Blitz, a sustained period of intense bombing campaigns carried out by the German Luftwaffe against British cities and towns during World War II. The Blitz lasted from 1940 to 1941 and caused significant damage and loss of life throughout the United Kingdom.
1950 English mathematician Alan Turing presented a paper in February 19, 1946, which has been claimed to be the first detailed design of a stored-program computer. There were delays in starting the project to build his Automatic Computing Engine, so in late 1947 Turing returned to Cambridge for a sabbatical year. While he was at Cambridge, the pilot ACE was built without him. It ran its first program on May 10, 1950.
1899 Fred Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska on May 10, 1899. Fred began dancing at the age of four. Fred formed a child act with his sister, Adele, that became popular at the time.Their first act was called "Juvenile Artists Presenting an Electric Musical Toe-Dancing Novelty." Adele eventually married, leaving Astaire to begin his solo career.
1902 The Society of American Magicians, the oldest fraternal magic organization in the world, was founded on May 10, 1902 in the back room of Martinka's magic shop in New York. The founders stated that the goal of the organization was to elevate and advance the art of magic.
1904 Journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley died of pleurisy at his Richmond, London terrace home on May 10, 1904. He was famous for his exploration of central Africa and his search for missionary and explorer David Livingstone. His grave, in the graveyard of St. Michael's Church in Pirbright, Surrey, is marked by a large piece of granite.
1908 In 1907 Anna Jarvis of Grafton, West Virginia decided to commemorate her mother's life by inviting a number of friends to her home and celebrate their mothers. The following year, on May 10, 1908, Anna persuaded her church, Andrews Methodist Church, to hold the first ever official Mother's Day service where her own mother had once taught Sunday school. The custom caught on and spread rapidly and in 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day.
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| Northern Pacific Railway postcard for Mother's Day 1916. |
1934 Marie, Cecile, Yvonne, Emilie and Annette Dionne were the first quintuplets known to survive infancy. They were born near Callender, Ontario, Canada to Oliva and Elzire Dionne on May 10, 1934. The Dionne quintuplets gained international attention and became a media sensation during the 1930s. Their birth was unexpected, and their survival was seen as a medical miracle at the time. The quintuplets were placed under the care of the Canadian government and became a major tourist attraction, with thousands of visitors coming to see them at the specially built Quintland theme park.
1937 Britain’s first frozen food was asparagus. Made by Smedley's of Wisbech, it went on sale on May 10, 1937. One 1937 advert promised; "We can give you beautiful green-tipped spears of Evesham Asparagus at Christmas, and they are as fresh as the morning they were cut."
1940 When Neville Chamberlain became UK Prime Minister in 1937, he determined to pursue a policy of appeasing Nazi Germany. When Adolf Hitler invaded Austria and the Sudetenland (a part of Czechoslovakia), Chamberlain tried to keep the peace. However, his policy of appeasement toward Hitler failed to prevent the outbreak of World War II. He resigned on May 10, 1940 following the defeat of the British forces in Norway.
1940 When Britain invaded Iceland on May 10, 1940 during World War II, they brought four battleships and 746 Royal Marines against Iceland's 60 police officers and 300 untrained reservists. The invasion was carried out because the British Government feared that the island would be used by Germany. There was only one casualty, a Royal Marine who committed suicide en route to Iceland.
1940 The first German bombs of World War II to fall on England were dropped on May 10, 1940, targeting the Kentish villages of Chilham and Petham. This event marked the beginning of the Blitz, a sustained period of intense bombing campaigns carried out by the German Luftwaffe against British cities and towns during World War II. The Blitz lasted from 1940 to 1941 and caused significant damage and loss of life throughout the United Kingdom.
1950 English mathematician Alan Turing presented a paper in February 19, 1946, which has been claimed to be the first detailed design of a stored-program computer. There were delays in starting the project to build his Automatic Computing Engine, so in late 1947 Turing returned to Cambridge for a sabbatical year. While he was at Cambridge, the pilot ACE was built without him. It ran its first program on May 10, 1950.
1994 After serving 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela became the South African president. Mandela was the first South African President elected in a completely democratic election and the first modern black president of his country. His inauguration, which took place in Pretoria on May 10, 1994, attracted the largest number of world leaders since President Kennedy's funeral in 1963.
2013 The final component of the spire of New York City's One World Trade Center was installed on May 10, 2013, bringing the building, the tallest in the Western Hemisphere, to a height of 1,776 feet (541 m). The building opened in 2014.
2019 The current Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom is Simon Armitage. He was appointed on May 10, 2019 and is the 21st Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom. He is a professor of poetry at the University of Leeds and has published 28 collections of poetry. His work has been studied by millions of children as part of the national curriculum and in 2010 he received a CBE for services to poetry.
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