Today is Thursday, May 10, the 131st day of 2012. There are 235 days left in the year.

1497 ― Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci leaves for first voyage to New World

1752 ― Benjamin Franklins first tests the lightning rod

1906 ― Russia's Duma (Parliament) meets for first time

1908 ― First Mother's Day observed (Philadelphia)

1959 ― Soviet forces arrive in Afghanistan

1972 ― Overloaded South Korean bus plunges into reservoir, killing 77

1981 ― Francois Mitterrand defeats Valery Giscard d'Estaing for president of France

1983 ― Lee Chin-yong performs 170 continuous chin-ups in Seoul

1994 ― Nelson Mandela sworn in as South Africa's first black president

1994 ― Silvio Berlusconi forms Italian government with five neo-fascists