May 10: What Happened on This Day in History (High_school Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1503 - Christopher Columbus visits the Cayman Islands and names them Las Tortugas after the numerous turtles there.
2. 1773 - The Parliament of Great Britain passes the Tea Act, designed to save the British East India Company by granting it a monopoly on the North American tea trade.
3. 1775 - American Revolutionary War: Representatives from the Thirteen Colonies begin the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
4. 1869 - The First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah (not Promontory Point, Utah) with the golden spike.
5. 1872 - Victoria Woodhull becomes the first woman nominated for President of the United States.
6. 1893 - The Supreme Court of the United States rules in Nix v. Hedden that a tomato is a vegetable, not a fruit, under the Tariff Act of 1883.
7. 1924 - J. Edgar Hoover is appointed the Director of the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation, and remains so until his death in 1972.
8. 1960 - The nuclear submarine USS Triton completes Operation Sandblast, the first underwater circumnavigation of the earth.
9. 1994 - Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first black president.
10. 2013 - The Freedom Tower becomes the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.
11. Famous Birthdays: Jean-Marie Leclair (French violinist and composer), Augustin-Jean Fresnel (French physicist and engineer), William Henry Barlow (English engineer), John Wilkes Booth (American actor, assassin of Abraham Lincoln), George E. Smith (American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

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Click Here for Tomorrow in History: May 11

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.