50 YEARS AGO

May 15, 1951: Communist forces launch a spring offensive against United Nations troops in Korea. The effort fizzles out within a week.

75 YEARS AGO

May 9, 1926: Floyd Bennett and Richard E. Byrd make the first flight over the North Pole.

May 10, 1926: U.S. Marines are dispatched to suppress a rebellion in Nicaragua. After a brief withdrawal, they will return in August and stay until 1933.

125 YEARS AGO

May 10, 1876: In Philadelphia, President Ulysses S. Grant opens the Centennial Exposition, which celebrates 100 years of progress since American independence.

June 6, 1876: Mark Twain’s novel Tom Sawyer is published in England. It will not appear in America for another six months.

June 25, 1876: At the battle of the Little Bighorn, Gen. George A. Custer and more than 260 others, most of them members of the 7th U.S. Cavalry, are killed by Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

150 YEARS AGO

May 1851: William Cooper Nell publishes Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812 , one of the earliest books about African-American history.

May 15, 1851: The inaugural Erie Railroad train from New York City arrives at Dunkirk, New York, connecting the Atlantic and the Great Lakes by rail.

June 5, 1851: The first installment of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin , the most influential antislavery novel ever written, is published in a Washington newspaper.

225 YEARS AGO

May 2, 1776: King Louis XVI of France secretly agrees to send $200,000 worth of arms and ammunition to American colonists rebelling against Britain, France’s age-old enemy. Within a year, the assistance will total more than a million dollars.

June 7, 1776: In the Continental Congress, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduces a resolution calling for the colonies to declare their independence. On June 11, the congress appoints a committee to draw up a declaration.

325 YEARS AGO

May 10, 1676: Gov. William Berkeley of Virginia proclaims Nathaniel Bacon, who is leading an armed force against hostile Indians, to be a rebel.