MAY 9.
1502. Columbus sailed from Cadiz, with four vessels and 140 men and boys, in search of a passage to the South sea, being his fourth voyage across the Atlantic. It was a disastrous expedition for the admiral, against whom the elements seem to have joined his countrymen, to complete the ruin of his fortunes.
1657. William Bradford, second governor of Plymouth colony, died. He removed to America with the first settlers of the colony, and was their governor thirty years. He wrote a history of the colony from 1602 to 1646, which was deposited in the library of the old south church in Boston, where it fell a sacrifice to the fury of the British, 1775.
1657. A secret treaty signed at Paris between Louis XIV and Cromwell, for "the ruin and destruction of the proud and tyrannical monarchy of Spain."
1760. Nicholas Lewis Zinzendorf, a German count, died; founder of the sect of Moravians, or Hernhutters.
1767. Cassini observed, by the position of certain spots, the revolution of the planet Venus on its axis.
1768. Bonnell Thornton died; an English poet, essayist and miscellaneous writer, and translator of Plautus.
1776. Ellen Ellis at Beumaris in Anglesey gave birth to a child in her 72d year.
1781. British generals Arnold and Philips took Wilmington, Va.
1781. Spaniards took Pensacola and all Florida.
1791. Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers, died. He was judge of the admiralty court of Pennsylvania; his writings abound with wit, humor and satire.
1794. Charles Henry d'Estaing, a French admiral, guillotined. He was commander of the French squadron in the American war; and at the revolution in France became member of the assembly of notables.
1799. Sally from the garrison of St. Jean d'Acre, when they succeeded in spiking 4 cannon within the French lines.
1803. Robert Chambers died at Paris; a learned English judge and orientalist.
1805. Frederick Schiller, an eminent German dramatist, died. He is also the author of a history of the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain.
1813. The siege of fort Meigs raised. It had continued 13 days, and it was computed that 1760 cannon balls and shells had been fired at the fort, by which 17 were killed and 66 wounded.
1832. Israel Thorndike, a Boston merchant, died. He possessed a talent for business which enabled him to accumulate the largest fortune ever acquired in New England, amounting to nearly two millions. In 1818 he purchased the valuable library of professor Ebeling, of Hamburg, 4,000 vols., and presented it to Harvard university. This library is considered the most valuable and extensive in American history and antiquities, ever collected.
1832. Camillo Philip Louis Borghese, an Italian prince of immense wealth, died. He was an officer under Bonaparte, whose sister he married. After the abdication of the emperor, he broke up all connection with the Bonaparte family, and separated from his wife.
1836. Caleb P. Bennett, governor of the state of Delaware, died, aged 78. He was the last surviving officer of the Delaware regiment in the revolutionary army.
1846. Battle of Resaca de la Palma and death of major Samuel Ringgold, whose place of sepulture in Baltimore is surrounded by an inclosure of Mexican bayonets.
1846. Charles Turner Torrey died in the jail at Baltimore, Maryland, while sustaining an imprisonment for a breach of the laws of Maryland in relation to kidnapping slaves.
1853. An earthquake completely destroyed Schiraz in Persia; 12,000 lives were lost.
1854. An imperial ukase in Russia called for nine men out of every thousand souls of the "eleventh ordinary partial levy in the eastern portion of the empire," and, independently of this, three recruits out of every thousand souls to bring up arrears; the Jews furnishing ten men out of a thousand.