Today in History: Nelson Mandela sworn in as South Africa's 1st black president

The following are some of the major events to have occurred on May 10:

1801 - First Barbary War: The Barbary pirates of Tripoli declare war on the United States of America (1st US foreign war).

1857 - Indian mutiny against rule by the British East India Company begins with the revolt of the Sepoy soldiers in Meerut.

1904 – Sir Henry Morton Stanley, British-born journalist and African explorer, died. He was famous for his rescue of the Scottish missionary explorer David Livingstone in 1871.

1933 – Nazis, nationalist students and professors in black robes gathered on a square in central Berlin to burn books by Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Bertolt Brecht and other authors condemned by Adolf Hitler’s followers as “un-German”.

1940 – Winston Churchill took over as British prime minister following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain.

1941 – Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, flew from Augsburg and parachuted down near Glasgow, Scotland, in an apparent attempt to negotiate a peace deal. He was arrested and imprisoned.

1963 – Pope John XXIII received the Balzan Peace Prize, the first peace prize ever awarded to a pope.

1981 – Francois Mitterrand elected as first Socialist president in France.

1994 – Nelson Mandela was sworn in as South Africa’s first black president.

1995 – Britain lifted a 23-year ban on ministerial talks with Sinn Fein, the political ally of the Irish Republican Army guerrillas in Northern Ireland.

1997 – 1,560 people were killed and 2,810 injured when an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale rocked rural areas of eastern Iran.

2005 – Germany unveiled a new memorial in Berlin for the six million Jewish victims of Nazi terror.

2013 – Final piece of One World Trade Center is attached, making it the tallest building in the U.S.

(Reuters)