What Happened on May 10th in History
30 historical events on this date
Carol I is crowned the King of the Romanian Kingdom.
Carol I or Charles I of Romania, nicknamed the King of Independence ; was the monarch of Romania from 1866 to his death in 1914, ruling as Prince (Domnitor) from 1866 to 1881, and as King from 1881...
Finnish farmworker Karl Emil Malmelin kills seven people with an axe at the Simola croft in the village of Klaukkala.
Karl Emil Malmelin was a Finnish farmworker and mass murderer.
The Horch & Cir. Motorwagenwerke AG is founded. It would eventually become the Audi company.
Horch was a German car manufacturer, which traced its roots to several companies founded in the late 19th and early 20th century by August Horch.
Mother's Day is observed for the first time in the United States, in Grafton, West Virginia.
Mother's Day is a celebration honoring the mother of the family or individual, as well as motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society. It is celebrated on different days in...
Sailing in the lifeboat James Caird, Ernest Shackleton arrives at South Georgia after a journey of 800 nautical miles from Elephant Island.
The voyage of the James Caird was a journey of 1,300 kilometres (700 nmi) from Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands through the Southern Ocean to South Georgia, undertaken by Sir Ernest...
The United States annexes the Kingman Reef.
Kingman Reef is a largely submerged, uninhabited, triangle-shaped reef, geologically an atoll, 9.0 nmi (20 km) east-west and 4.5 nmi (8 km) north-south, in the North Pacific Ocean, roughly halfway...
J. Edgar Hoover is appointed first Director of the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and remains so until his death in 1972.
John Edgar Hoover was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the fifth and final director of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) and the first director of the Federal Bureau of...
Censorship: In Germany, the Nazis stage massive public book burnings.
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or...
World War II: Winston Churchill is appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain. On the same day, Germany invades France, The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom occupies Iceland.
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again...
World War II: German fighters accidentally bomb the German city of Freiburg.
World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major...
World War II: The House of Commons in London is damaged by the Luftwaffe in an air raid.
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of...
World War II: Rudolf Hess parachutes into Scotland to try to negotiate a peace deal between the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany.
Rudolf Walter Richard Hess was a German politician, convicted war criminal, and a leading member of the Nazi Party in Germany. Appointed Deputy to the Führer in 1933, Hess held that position until...
World War II: The Thai Phayap Army invades the Shan States during the Burma Campaign.
Phayap Army was the hastily combined forces between the Royal Thai Army (RTA) and the Royal Thai Air Force (RTAF) that invaded the Siamese Shan States of Burma on 10 May 1942 during the Burma...
First successful launch of an American V-2 rocket at White Sands Proving Ground.
The V-2 rocket, with the development name Aggregat-4 (A4), was the world's first practical, modern ballistic missile and suborbital launch vehicle. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket...
Air France Flight 406 is destroyed by a bomb over the Sahara, killing 78.
Air France Flight 406 was a Lockheed L-1649 Starliner that crashed in French Algeria on May 10, 1961, after a bomb exploded on board. All 78 passengers and crew on board were killed. It was the...
Marvel Comics publishes the first issue of The Incredible Hulk.
Marvel Comics is an American comic book publisher, a property of the Walt Disney Company since December 31, 2009, and a subsidiary of Disney Publishing Worldwide since March 2023. Marvel was founded...
The Northrop M2-F2 crashes on landing, becoming the inspiration for the novel Cyborg and TV series The Six Million Dollar Man.
The Northrop M2-F2 was a heavyweight lifting body based on studies at NASA's Ames and Langley research centers and built by the Northrop Corporation in 1966.
Vietnam War: The Battle of Dong Ap Bia begins with an assault on Hill 937. It will ultimately become known as Hamburger Hill.
The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while...
Sony introduces the Betamax videocassette recorder.
Sony Group Corporation, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses,...
In Thailand, a fire at the Kader Toy Factory kills over 200 workers.
Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand, and formerly known as Siam until 1939, is a country located in Mainland Southeast Asia. It shares land borders with Myanmar to the west and northwest,...
Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first black president.
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid activist, statesman, and revolutionary who was the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first Black...
A blizzard strikes Mount Everest, killing eight climbers by the next day.
Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth above sea level. It lies in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas and marks part of the China–Nepal border at its summit. Its height was most...
The 7.3 Mw Qayen earthquake strikes Iran's Khorasan Province killing 1,567 people.
The moment magnitude scale is a measure of an earthquake's magnitude based on its seismic moment. Mw was defined in a 1979 paper by Thomas C. Hanks and Hiroo Kanamori. Similar to the local...
FBI agent Robert Hanssen is sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for selling United States secrets to Russia for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds.
Robert Philip Hanssen was an American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services intermittently against the United States from 1979 to 2001....
A hand grenade thrown by Vladimir Arutyunian lands about 20 m 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.
A grenade is a small explosive projectile. It can be thrown by hand, launched by a rifle attachment, or launched by a dedicated launcher. A modern hand grenade generally consists of an explosive...
The Damascus bombings are carried out using a pair of car bombs detonated by suicide bombers outside a military intelligence complex in Damascus, Syria, killing 55 people.
A pair of car bombs, allegedly detonated by suicide bombers, exploded outside a military intelligence complex in Damascus, Syria, on 10 May 2012. Combined, the perpetrators detonated more than 1,000...
One World Trade Center becomes the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.
One World Trade Center, also known as One WTC and the Freedom Tower, is the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Designed by David Childs of...
Syrian civil war: The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) capture the last footholds of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Al-Tabqah, bringing the Battle of Tabqa to an end.
The Syrian civil war was an armed conflict that began with the Syrian revolution in March 2011, when popular discontent with the Ba'athist regime ruled by Bashar al-Assad triggered large-scale...
Queen Elizabeth II misses the State Opening of Parliament for the first time in 59 years. It was the first time that a new session of Parliament was opened by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge acting as Counsellors of State.
Elizabeth II was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during her lifetime and was the...
Start of the May 2024 solar storms, the most powerful set of geomagnetic storms since the 2003 Halloween solar storms.
The solar storms of May 2024 were a series of powerful solar storms with extreme solar flares and geomagnetic storm components that occurred from 10 to 13 May 2024 during solar cycle 25. They are...