Today is Monday, May 17, the 137th day of 2010. There are 228 days left in the year.

On this date

In 1792, the New York Stock Exchange had its origins as a group of brokers met under a tree on Wall Street.

In 1900, a small British cavalry force finally relieved the garrison under Colonel Robert Baden-Powell at Mafeking (now Mafikeng) in South Africa after 217 days' siege by Dutch-speaking Boer settlers.

In 1939, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth arrived in Quebec on the first visit to Canada by reigning British sovereigns.

In 1940, the invading German army entered the Belgian capital, Brussels.

In 1954, the US Supreme Court overturned an 1896 ruling that education should be "separate but equal", thus outlawing racial segregation in the state school system its Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision.

In 1968, in France, after many days of rioting, students and striking workers marched to protest against conditions in schools and universities in Paris and other cities.

In 1974, 32 people were killed and hundreds injured when three car bombs exploded in the centre of the Irish capital Dublin. The Ulster Volunteer Force, a guerrilla force fighting to keep Northern Ireland British, later claimed responsibility for the bombings and another on the same day in the town of Monaghan.

In 1980, rioting that claimed 18 lives erupted in Miami's Liberty City after an all-white jury in Tampa acquitted four former Miami police officers of fatally beating black insurance executive Arthur McDuffie.

In 1987, 37 American sailors were killed and 62 injured when an Iraqi F-1 Mirage fighter attacked the US Navy frigate Stark in the Persian Gulf with two Exocet missiles. (Iraq and the U.S. called the attack a mistake.)

Thought for Today

"A burning purpose attracts others who are drawn along with it and help fulfil it." — Margaret Bourke-White, American photojournalist (1904-1971).