Today in History: May 10

1285: Philip III of Spain is succeeded by Philip IV ("the Fair").

1503: Christopher Columbus discovers the Cayman Islands.

1676: Bacon’s Rebellion begins in the New World.

1773: To keep the troubled East India Company afloat, Parliament passes the Tea Act, taxing all tea in the American colonies.

1774: Louis XVI succeeds his father Louis XV as King of France.

1775: American troops capture Fort Ticonderoga from the British.

1794: Elizabeth, the sister of King Louis XVI, is beheaded.

1796: Napoleon Bonaparte wins a brilliant victory against the Austrians at Lodi bridge in Italy.

1840: Mormon leader Joseph Smith moves his band of followers to Illinois to escape the hostilities they experienced in Missouri.

1857: The Bengal Army in India revolts against the British.

1863: General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson succumbs to illness and wounds received during the Battle of Chancellorsville.

1865: Union cavalry troops capture Confederate President Jefferson Davis near Irvinville, Georgia.

1869: The Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah.

1859: French emperor Napoleon III leaves Paris to join his troops preparing to battle the Austrian army in Northern Italy.

1872: Victoria Woodhull becomes first woman nominated for U.S. president.

1917: Allied ships get destroyer escorts to fend off German attacks in the Atlantic.

1924: J. Edgar Hoover is appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

1928: WGY-TV in Schenectady, New York, begins regular television programming.

1933: Nazis begin burning books by "unGerman" writers such as Heinrich Mann and Erich Maria Remarque, author ofAll Quiet on the Western Front.

1940: German forces begin a blitzkrieg of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, skirting France’s "impenetrable" Maginot Line.

1940: Winston Churchill succeeds Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister.

1941: England’s House of Commons is destroyed during the worst of the London Blitz: 550 German bombers drop 100,000 incendiary bombs.

1960: The USS Nautilus completes first circumnavigation of globe underwater.

1994: Nelson Mandela is sworn in as South Africa’s first black president.