History of the Day for:
May 10
- 1775: Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys captured the British fort at Ticonderoga, N.Y.
- 1801: First Barbary War: The Barbary pirates of Tripoli declare war on the United States of America.
- 1818: American patriot Paul Revere died in Boston.
- 1865: President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy was captured by Union forces during the Civil War.
- 1869: The U.S. Pacific railroad was completed when Union Pacific and Central Pacific joined in Promontory, Utah.
- 1872: Victoria Woodhull became the first woman nominated to be president by the National Equal Rights party.
- 1908: The first Mother's Day was observed.
- 1924: J. Edgar Hoover was named FBI director.
- 1930: The first planetarium in the U.S., the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, opened.
- 1933: Nazi students and professors in black robes gathered in Berlin to burn books by Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Bertolt Brecht, Albert Einstein and others condemned by Hitler's followers as decadent or "un-German."
- 1969: The National and American Football Leagues announced plans to merge for the 1970-71 season.
- 1970: The Boston Bruins won their first Stanley Cup since the beginning of World War II by defeating St. Louis.
- 1986: Navy Lt. Commander Donnie Cochran became the first black pilot to fly with the celebrated Blue Angels precision aerial demonstration team.
- 1994: Nelson Mandela was sworn in as South Africa's first black president.
- 1996: Excel Communications, Inc. becomes the youngest company ever to join the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), trading under the symbol (ECI).
- 1996: A "rogue storm" near the summit of Mount Everest kills eight climbers, making this the deadliest day in the mountain's history. Among the dead are experienced climbers Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, both of whom were leading paid expeditions to the summit.
- 2001: In Ghana, a stampede at a football game kills over 120 spectators.
- 2002: F.B.I. 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.
- 2003: The May 2003 tornado outbreak sequence takes place.
- 2005: A hand grenade which is thrown by Vladimir Arutinian lands about 65 feet (20 metres) from U.S. President George W. Bush while he is giving a speech to a crowd in Tbilisi, Georgia, but it malfunctions and does not detonate.