May 10 Birthday
On May 10, 1869, a golden spike was driven into a laurelwood tie at Promontory Summit, Utah, connecting the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads. The transcontinental railroad was complete. A telegraph wire sent the message "Done" to the nation. The journey from New York to San Francisco, which had taken four to six months by wagon, now took seven days. The railroad transformed the American economy, opened the West to settlement, and accelerated the destruction of the buffalo and the displacement of Native Americans. The golden spike was 17.6 karats and was engraved with the names of the railroad officials. It was removed after the ceremony and replaced with a regular iron spike. It is now at Stanford University. Winston Churchill became Prime Minister on May 10, 1940, the day Germany invaded France and the Low Countries. He was sixty-five and had been considered a spent force — a failed politician who had been wrong about India, wrong about the gold standard, wrong about Edward VIII. He was the only man Parliament would accept after the fall of Neville Chamberlain. He told the House of Commons three days later: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat." France surrendered six weeks later. Britain stood alone. For eighteen months, until the United States entered the war, Churchill held the nation together with rhetoric. He died in 1965 and was given a state funeral — the first commoner to receive one since the Duke of Wellington. First Mother's Day was observed on May 10, 1908, in Grafton, West Virginia. Anna Jarvis organized the event in honor of her mother, who had died the previous year. She campaigned for a national holiday, and Congress made it official in 1914. Jarvis came to hate what she had created — she objected to the commercialization, the florists, the greeting cards. She was arrested for disturbing the peace at a carnation convention. She spent her savings fighting the holiday and died in a sanitarium, blind and broke, at eighty-four. She never married and never had children. Fred Astaire, born this day in 1899, was screened by a Paramount executive who wrote: "Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little." His partnership with Ginger Rogers produced ten films. Rogers did everything Astaire did, backwards, in high heels. George Carlin, born this day in 1937, was arrested in 1972 for performing his "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" routine at Milwaukee's Summerfest. The routine went to the Supreme Court, which upheld the FCC's right to regulate indecent material. People born on May 10 fall under the zodiac sign of Taurus. The birthstone is Emerald and the birth flower is Lily of the Valley. Historical events on May 10 include 1869: Golden spike driven at Promontory Summit, completing transcontinental railroad, 1908: First Mother's Day observed in Grafton, West Virginia, 1940: Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of Britain. Famous people born on May 10 include Fred Astaire (1899), George Carlin (1937), Bono (1960).