On May 10, 1773, the British Parliament passes the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company from bankruptcy by greatly lowering the tea tax it paid to the British government and, thus, granting it a de facto monopoly on the American tea trade. Because all legal tea entered the colonies through England, allowing the East India Company to pay lower taxes in Britain also allowed it to sell tea more cheaply in the colonies. Even untaxed Dutch tea, which entered the colonies illegally through smuggling, was more expensive the East India tea after the act took effect.

The South loses one of its boldest generals on May 10, 1863, when 39-year-old Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson dies of pneumonia a week after his own troops accidentally fired on him during the Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia. In the first two years of the war, Jackson terrorized Union commanders.

The humiliating defeat of Louis Napoleon’s Second Empire of France is made complete on May 10, 1871, when the Treaty of Frankfurt is signed, ending the Franco-Prussian War and marking the decisive entry of a newly unified German state on the stage of European power politics, so long dominated by the great empires of England and France.

On May 10, 1970, 40 seconds into overtime of Game 4 of the Stanley Cup final, Boston Bruins star Bobby Orr slips the winning goal past St. Louis Blues goaltender Glenn Hall. After scoring, Orr leaps into the air before landing flat and sliding into his teammates’ embrace. The famous celebration is immortalized by Boston Record-American photographer Ray Lussier, whose image of the soaring Orr is one of the most famous sports photographs of all time.

In South Africa, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is sworn in as the first Black president of South Africa. In his inaugural address, Mandela, who spent 27 years of his life as a political prisoner of the South African government, declared that “the time for the healing of the wounds has come.” Two weeks earlier, more than 22 million South Africans had turned out to cast ballots in the country’s first-ever multiracial parliamentary elections. An overwhelming majority chose Mandela and his African National Congress (ANC) party to lead the country.

On May 10, 2002, Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent who intermittently sold state secrets to Russia over the course of two decades, receives his sentencing for espionage: life in prison without the possibility of parole. "I apologize for my behavior. I am shamed by it," said Hanssen. "I have opened the door for calumny against my totally innocent wife and children. I have hurt so many deeply."