TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Friday, May 10, the 131st day of 2024. There are 235 days left in the year. On this date in:
1773: Britain’s Parliament passed the Tea Act in an effort to save the East India Company from its financial woes. Later that year, fallout from the measure led American colonists in Boston to organize the Boston Tea Party.
1775: During the Revolutionary War, Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold led the Green Mountain Boys in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga from the British. Canons and more were taken from the fort to Boston to bolster the colonists there.
1865: Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured by Union Troops near Irwinville, Georgia. Davis had planned to escape to Texas and build a new Confederacy, but he was captured by Union forces despite wearing a disguise, his wife’s cloak and shawl.
1869: The United States was connected from coast to coast by the first transcontinental railroad. The ceremonial Golden Spike was driven during a ceremony on Promontory Summit in Utah Territory to mark the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railways.
1872: Victoria Woodhull was nominated by the Equal Rights Party, which she had helped establish, as a candidate for president. She is considered the first woman to run for president in the U.S., though women had not yet been allowed to vote. The suffragist aimed to change that. The party nominated Fredrick Douglas for vice president, but he did not acknowledge the nomination.
1924: J. Edgar Hoover began his 48-year tenure leading the FBI when he was appointed acting director of the Bureau of Investigation, which was later renamed. He was promoted to director later in the year.
1940: Winston Churchill became prime minister of the United Kingdom after the resignation of Neville Chamberlain.
1962: Marvel Comics published its first issue of “The Incredible Hulk.”
1975: Sony released its Betamax video cassette recorder in Japan.
1994: South Africa inaugurated its first Black president, Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid activist had been imprisoned 27 years until his release in 1990.
1994: Serial killer John Wayne Gacy, convicted of 33 counts of murder, was executed by lethal injection.
1996: Eight climbers died on Mount Everest when they were caught in a blizzard while descending from the summit.
2002: Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who had admitted to spying for the Soviet Union and Russia, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
2005: A grenade was thrown but failed to detonate during a speech by U.S. President George W. Bush in Tbilisi in the Eastern European nation of Georgia. Vladimir Arutinian, a Georgia citizen, was convicted of trying to assassinate Bush and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Arutinian was sentenced to life in prison.