May 10 through May 16
May 10
Thanks to an army of thousands of Chinese and Irish immigrants, who laid 2,000 miles of track, the Nation’s first transcontinental railway line is finished by the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines at Promontory Point, Utah. – 1869.
May 11
Nationwide railway strike begins in Pullman, Ill. and 260,000 railroad workers ultimately joined the strike to protest wage cuts by the Pullman Palace Car Co. in what is now a part of the South Side of Chicago. – 1894.
May 12
The dead body of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh’s baby is found more than two months after he was kidnapped from his family’s Hopewell, N.J., mansion. Lindbergh, who became the first worldwide celebrity five years earlier when he flew The Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic Ocean, and his wife, Anne, discovered a ransom note in their 20-month-old child’s empty room March 1. – 1932.
May 13
The U.S. Congress overwhelmingly votes in favor of U.S. president James K. Polk’s request to declare war on Mexico in a dispute over Texas. – 1846.
May 14
One year after the United States doubled its territory with the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark Expedition leaves St. Louis, Mo., on a mission to explore the Northwest from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. – 1804.
May 15
U.S. president John Adams orders the federal government to pack up and leave Philadelphia and establish the nation’s new capital in Washington, D.C.. – 1800.
May 16
Japanese mountaineer, Junko Tabei, becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. -1975.
Sources: History.com, Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards and Adam Wright, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council.