Mother’s Day is observed for the first time in the United States, in Grafton, West Virginia.

Mother’s Day is a holiday that is celebrated in many countries around the world to honor mothers and motherhood. The day is typically observed on the second Sunday in May in the United States, but the date may vary in other countries.

The modern version of Mother’s Day originated in the United States in the early 20th century, when Anna Jarvis, a social activist and writer, campaigned for a national holiday to honor mothers. Jarvis was inspired to create the holiday by her own mother, who had worked to improve health and sanitation conditions in her community.

After years of lobbying and advocacy, Mother’s Day was officially recognized as a national holiday in the United States in 1914, and it has since spread to other countries around the world.

Today, Mother’s Day is a time for children and families to express their love and gratitude to their mothers and maternal figures. It is a day to honor the hard work, sacrifice, and dedication of mothers, and to celebrate the important role they play in shaping the lives of their children and families.

Sony introduces the Betamax videocassette recorder.

Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette become King and Queen of France

The United Kingdom invades Iceland.

The invasion of Iceland by the Royal Navy and Royal Marines occurred on 10 May 1940, during World War II. The invasion was performed because the British government feared that the island would be used by the Germans, who had recently overrun Denmark, Iceland’s possessing country. The Government of Iceland issued a protest, charging that its neutrality had been “flagrantly violated” and “its independence infringed”.

At the start of the war, the UK imposed strict export controls on Icelandic goods, preventing profitable shipments to Germany, as part of its naval blockade. The UK offered assistance to Iceland, seeking co-operation “as a belligerent and an ally”, but Reykjavík refused and reaffirmed its neutrality. The German diplomatic presence in Iceland, along with the island’s strategic importance, alarmed the UK government.

After failing to persuade the Icelandic government to join the Allies, the UK invaded on the morning of 10 May 1940. The initial force of 746 Royal Marines commanded by Colonel Robert Sturges disembarked at the capital Reykjavík. Meeting no resistance, the troops moved quickly to disable communication networks, secure strategic locations, and arrest German citizens. Requisitioning local transport, the troops moved to Hvalfjörður, Kaldaðarnes, Sandskeið, and Akranes to secure potential landing areas against the possibility of a German counterattack.

During 1918, after a long period of Danish rule, Iceland had become an independent state in personal union with the Danish king and with common foreign affairs. The newly initiated Kingdom of Iceland declared itself a neutral country without a defence force. The treaty of union allowed for a revision to begin during 1941 and for unilateral termination three years after that, if no agreement was made. By 1928, all Icelandic political parties were in agreement that the union treaty would be terminated as soon as possible.

On 9 April 1940, German forces began Operation Weserübung, invading both Norway and Denmark. Denmark was subdued within a day and occupied. On the same day, the British government sent a message to the Icelandic government, stating that the UK was willing to assist Iceland in maintaining its independence but would require facilities in Iceland to do so. Iceland was invited to join the UK in the war “as a belligerent and an ally.” The Icelandic government rejected the offer. On the next day, 10 April, the Icelandic parliament, the Alþingi, declared Danish King Christian X unable to perform his constitutional duties and assigned them to the government of Iceland, along with all other responsibilities previously performed by Denmark on behalf of Iceland.

On 12 April, as Operation Valentine, the British occupied the Faroe Islands. After the German invasion of Denmark and Norway, the British government became increasingly concerned that Germany would soon try to establish a military presence in Iceland. They felt that this would constitute an intolerable threat to British control of the North Atlantic. Just as importantly, the British were eager to obtain bases in Iceland for themselves to strengthen their Northern Patrol.

The National Gallery in London opens to the public for the first time.

The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900.

The Gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Its collection belongs to the government on behalf of the British public, and entry to the main collection is free of charge. It is among the most visited art museums in the world, after the Louvre, the British Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Unlike comparable museums in continental Europe, the National Gallery was not formed by nationalising an existing royal or princely art collection. It came into being when the British government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of John Julius Angerstein, an insurance broker and patron of the arts, in 1824. After that initial purchase the Gallery was shaped mainly by its early directors, notably Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, and by private donations, which comprise two-thirds of the collection.

The resulting collection is small in size, compared with many European national galleries, but encyclopaedic in scope; most major developments in Western painting “from Giotto to Cézanne” are represented with important works. It used to be claimed that this was one of the few national galleries that had all its works on permanent exhibition, but this is no longer the case.

The present building, the third to house the National Gallery, was designed by William Wilkins from 1832 to 1838. Only the façade onto Trafalgar Square remains essentially unchanged from this time, as the building has been expanded piecemeal throughout its history. Wilkins’s building was often criticised for the perceived weaknesses of its design and for its lack of space; the latter problem led to the establishment of the Tate Gallery for British art in 1897.

The Sainsbury Wing, an extension to the west by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, is a notable example of Postmodernist architecture in Britain. The current Director of the National Gallery is Gabriele Finaldi.

The Gallery was caught in controversy in 2018 over having some of the most expensive exhibition prices ever seen in London.

The National Gallery opened to the public on 10 May 1824, housed in Angerstein’s former townhouse at No. 100 Pall Mall. Angerstein’s paintings were joined in 1826 by those from Beaumont’s collection, and in 1831 by the Reverend William Holwell Carr’s bequest of 35 paintings. Initially the Keeper of Paintings, William Seguier, bore the burden of managing the Gallery, but in July 1824 some of this responsibility fell to the newly formed board of trustees.

The National Gallery at Pall Mall was frequently overcrowded and hot and its diminutive size in comparison with the Louvre in Paris was the cause of national embarrassment. But Agar Ellis, now a trustee of the Gallery, appraised the site for being “in the very gangway of London”; this was seen as necessary for the Gallery to fulfil its social purpose. Subsidence in No. 100 caused the Gallery to move briefly to No. 105 Pall Mall, which the novelist Anthony Trollope described as a “dingy, dull, narrow house, ill-adapted for the exhibition of the treasures it held”. This in turn had to be demolished for the opening of a road to Carlton House Terrace.

In 1832 construction began on a new building by William Wilkins on the site of the King’s Mews in Charing Cross, in an area that had been transformed over the 1820s into Trafalgar Square. The location was a significant one, between the wealthy West End and poorer areas to the east. The argument that the collection could be accessed by people of all social classes outstripped other concerns, such as the pollution of central London or the failings of Wilkins’s building, when the prospect of a move to South Kensington was mooted in the 1850s. According to the Parliamentary Commission of 1857, “The existence of the pictures is not the end purpose of the collection, but the means only to give the people an ennobling enjoyment”.

Bill Haley & The Comets release their song, “Rock Around the Clock”.

A riot breaks out at the Astor Opera House in New York City after a dispute between actors Edwin Forrest and William Charles Macready.

A fire at the Kader Toy Factory in Thailand kills 156 workers.

Nelson Mandela becomes South Africa’s first black president.