May 10

It’s Clean up Your Room Day and Birth Mother’s Day and International Migratory Bird Day and Golden Spike Day and National Shrimp Day

ON THIS DAY…
0105 The invention of paper is recorded in China: Chinese historical records will assert that the invention of paper is reported to the Chinese Emperor on this day by Tsai Lun, an official of the Imperial Court although archaeologists will place the invention some centuries earlier
1267 Vienna’s Catholic church ordered all Jews to wear distinctive garb
1291 Scottish nobles recognize the authority of Edward I of England
1772 To keep the troubled East India Company afloat, Parliament passed the Tea Act, taxing all tea in the American colonies
1774 Louis XVI becomes King of France
1775 Representatives from the 13 colonies of the United States meet in Philadelphia and raise the Continental Army to defend the new republic; they place it under command of Cavalier George Washington of Virginia
1775 Colonel Benedict Arnold, Ethan Allen and his 83 Green Mountain Boys captured the British-held fortress at Ticonderoga, NY without firing a shot; this was the first aggressive American action in the War of Independence
1797 The first American Navy ship, the “United States,” was launched
1801 The Barbary pirates of Tripoli declare war on the United States
1824 National Gallery in London opens to the public
1840 Mormon leader Joseph Smith moved his band of followers to Illinois to escape the hostilities they had experienced in Missouri
1865 Jefferson Davis is captured by Union troops near Irwinville, GA
1865 Union soldiers ambush and mortally wound Confederate raider William Quantrill in Kentucky
1869 A golden spike is driven into the ground in Promontory, UT where the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads meet; it marks the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States
1872 Victoria Woodhull and Frederick Douglass begin their campaign for President and Vice President; Woodhull, the first woman presidential candidate, champions free love, rights to abortion and divorce, legalized prostitution, spiritualism, and women’s voting rights
1879 The first national US archaeological society was formed in Boston, MA
1908 Mother’s Day is observed for the first time
1924 J. Edgar Hoover was appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation at age 29
1925 John T. Scopes was given a preliminary hearing before three judges; he had been arrested and charged under a new Tennessee’s state law, the Butler act, which prohibited the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution in public schools
1927 Charles Lindbergh picked up his plane, “The Spirit of St. Louis,” in San Diego and flew it to St. Louis
1929 The first submarine “lung” was tested
1930 The first US planetarium opened in Chicago
1932 William Faulkner makes his first trip to Hollywood to write for MGM
1935 Surgeon John Gibbon successfully maintained the cardiac and respiratory function of a cat using his invention, a rotating blood-film oxygenator in the first heart-lung machine; thus, he had demonstrated that life can be maintained by an external pump acting as an artificial heart during an operation
1940 British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigns; at the request of King George VI, Winston Churchill agrees to take over as prime minister
1941 Nazi deputy Rudolf Hess, apparently seeking a peace deal between Germany and Britain, steals a plane and crash lands in Scotland; he is arrested and imprisoned for the rest of the war
1949 The first planetarium in the US owned by a university opened at the University of Chapel Hill, NC
1954 Bill Haley and the Comets release “Rock Around the Clock”, the first rock and roll record to reach number one on the charts
1960 The nuclear submarine USS Triton completes the first underwater circumnavigation of the earth
1961 Beyond the Fringe, a revue starring Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller, made its West End debut
1981 François Mitterrand takes office as the first Socialist President of France
1983 The last episode of Laverne & Shirley aired on ABC-TV
1994 Nelson Mandela is sworn in as the first native African president of South Africa; a new, multi-racial cabinet is formed the following day
1995 Britain lifted a 23-year ban on ministerial talks with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army
2001 In Ghana, a stampede at a football game kills over 120 spectators
2002 FBI agent Robert Hanssen is given a life sentence without the possibility of parole for selling United States secrets to Moscow for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds

BORN:
1800 Charles Knowlton, physician whose popular treatise on birth control, the object of celebrated court actions in the in the United States and England, initiated the widespread use of contraceptives
1838 John Wilkes Booth, stage actor who, as part of a conspiracy plot, assassinated Abraham Lincoln
1888 Max Steiner, 3-time Academy Award-winning composer (Since You Went Away, Now, Voyager, The Informer, Gone with the Wind, Dark Victory, Casablanca)
1889 Mae Murray, silent screen actress (The Taming of Kaiser Bull, Circe, the Enchantress, The Merry Widow)
1899 Fred Astaire, dancer, singer and 2-time Emmy Award-winning actor (A Family Upside Down, An Evening with Fred Astaire, The Towering Inferno, On the Beach)
1902 David O. Selznick, film producer (Gone with the Wind, King Kong, Rebecca, The Most Dangerous Game)
1922 Nancy Walker, actress-director (Murder by Death, McMillan & Wife, Rhoda, Girl Crazy)
1933 Barbara Taylor Bradford, OBE, novelist (A Woman of Substance, Act of Will, Everything to Gain)
1936 Gary Owens, best remembered by the public as the on screen announcer on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In
1943 Donovan Leitch, singer-songwriter and guitarist (“Sunshine Superman,” “The Hurdy Gurdy Man,” “Mellow Yellow”)
1957 Sid Vicious (John Simon Ritchie), musician (Sex Pistols)
1959 Victoria Rowell, actress (The Young and the Restless, Diagnosis Murder, Barb Wire, Dumb & Dumber)
1960 Bono (Paul Hewson), vocalist and Grammy Award-winning songwriter (U2)
1969 John Scalzi, author and online writer (Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, The Android’s Dream)
1970 Sally Phillips, actress (Hippies, Smack the Pony, Bridget Jones’s Diary, The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, Clatterford)
1975 Hélio Castroneves, two-time Indianapolis 500 driver (2001, 2002), Dancing with the Stars champion

DIED:
1818 Paul Revere, silversmith and a patriot in the American Revolution who helped organize an intelligence and alarm system to keep watch on the British military, dies at 84
1863 General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Confederate general during the Civil War, dies at 39 – eight days after Confederate pickets accidentally shot him at the Battle of Chancellorsville
1904 Sir Henry Morton Stanley, GCB, journalist and explorer famous for his exploration of Africa and his search for David Livingstone, dies at 63
1920 John Wesley Hyatt, inventor and pioneer of the plastics industry who discovered the process for making celluloid, dies at 83
1977 Joan Crawford, Academy Award-winning actress (Mildred Pierce, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Grand Hotel), dies at 71
1994 John Wayne Gacy, serial killer known as “The Killer Clown” made the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest sentence imposed on a mass murderer; he was given 21 consecutive life sentences and 12 death sentences is executed at 52
1999 Shel Silverstein, poet, Grammy Award-winning songwriter (“A Boy Named Sue”), musician, composer, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of children’s books (A Light In The Attic, Lafcadio, Where the Sidewalk Ends, The Giving Tree), dies at 68
2000 Craig Stevens, actor (Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Deadly Mantis, Peter Gunn), dies at 81
2001 Deborah Walley, actress (Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Summer Magic, Beach Blanket Bingo, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, Benji), dies at 57
2006 Val Guest, director and BAFTA Award-winning screenwriter (The Day the Earth Caught Fire, Quatermass 2, Up the Creek), dies at 94