10th of May

It is the 130th day of the year, with only 235 days remaining until the new year.

70 - Titus, son of Emperor Vespasian, opens a full-scale assault on Jerusalem and attacks the city's Third Wall to the northwest.

1775 - A small colonial militia led by Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold, captures Fort Ticonderoga.

1775 - Representatives from the 13 colonies, begin the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

1865 - Jefferson Davis is captured by Union troops near Irwinville, Georgia.

1865 - In Kentucky, Union soldiers ambush and mortally wound Confederate raider William Quantrill.

1869 - The First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah with the driving of a golden spike.

1893 - Under the Tariff Act of 1883, the Supreme Court rules in Nix Vs. Hedden, that a tomato is a vegetable, not a fruit.

1908 - mother's Day is observed for the first time in the U.S., in Grafton, West Virginia.

1924 - J. Edgar Hoover is appointed the Director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, and remains so until his death almost 48 years later.

1933 - In Germany, the Nazis stage massive public book burnings.

1940 - Winston Churchill is appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1941 - Rudolf Hess parachutes into Scotland to try to negotiate a peace deal between the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany.

1946 - It is the first successful launch of an American V-2 rocket at White Sands Proving Ground.

1954 - Bill Haley & His Comets release "Rock Around the Clock," the first rock and roll record to reach number one on the Billboard charts.

1969 - The Battle of Dong Ap Bia begins with an assault on Hill 937.  It will become known as Hamburger Hill.

1994 - Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first black president.

2002 - FBI agent Robert Hanssen is sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for selling United States secrets to Moscow for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds

Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson - The famous Confederate General and Lee's Second-in-Command, dies in 1863 after being wounded eight days prior by friendly fire.  His left arm needed to be amputated and later suffered pneumonia.