Y MICHAEL D. SHEAR May 11, 2011 Newt Gingrich is in.

Civil War Background In the mid-19th century, while the United States was experiencing an era of tremendous growth, a fundamental economic difference existed between the country’s northern and southern regions. While in the North, manufacturing and industry was well established, and agriculture was mostly limited to small-scale farms, the South’s economy was based on a system of large-scale farming that depended on the labor of black slaves to grow certain crops, especially cotton and tobacco. Growing abolitionist sentiment in the North after the 1830s and northern opposition to slavery’s extension into the new western territories led many southerners to fear that the existence of slavery in america–and thus the backbone…

MAY 10, 2011, 3:10 PM ET Federal regulators rarely are remembered for their oratorical prowess—or for that matter, remembered at all.

This Day in African History – Nelson Mandela Released By Alistair Boddy-Evans, About.com Guide February 11, 2010 After imprisonment for 27 years, Nelson Mandela was finally released by South Africa’s Apartheid regime on 11 February 1990. Mandela walked out of the gates of Victor Verster Prison, Paarl, and was whisked away in a silver BMW to Cape Town where he appeared on the balcony of the City Hall. 50,000 people congregated to hear his address:

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (1874-1922) Shackleton was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer, best known for leading the ‘Endurance’ expedition of 1914-16.

The National Gallery London ~ One Of The Best Collections Of European Art In The World

Louis XV was king of France from 1715 to 1774. He was nicknamed ‘the Well-Beloved’, but his failures contributed to the crisis that brought on the French Revolution. Louis was born at Versailles on 15 February 1710. At the age of five, he succeeded his great grandfather Louis XIV as king of France. The Duke of Orleans became regent. After the duke’s death, Louis was heavily influenced by his former tutor, Andre-Hercule de Fleury, whom he later created chief minister. Fleury ensured relatively stable government for the next 17 years. In 1725, Louis was married to Maria Leczczynska, daughter of the deposed king of Poland. After Fleury’s death Louis took…

May 10, 1977:  On this day in 1977, the legendary actress Joan Crawford dies of a heart attack in her New York City apartment. Born Lucille Fay Le Sueur (her birth year has been variously recorded as 1904 or 1908), Crawford was a nightclub dancer who broke into Broadway musicals in the Jazz Age of the 1920s. She first twisted her way into Hollywood stardom as a vivacious flapper in the 1928 silent film Our Dancing Daughters. She made a series of similar pictures, including Dancing Lady (1933), which co-starred Fred Astaire in his silver-screen debut. Crawford’s seamless transition into the sound film era made her one of the most popular and–by the late 1930s–one of…

Purchase High Resolution Map of Transcontinental in 1901 By: Andrew Glass May 10, 2011 04:34 AM EDT  On this day in 1869, workers for the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads drove a golden spike into the rails at Promontory Summit, Utah. The event marked completion of the first transcontinental railroad, connecting the nation from coast to coast and cutting a journey of at least four months to a week. It also, in a sense, fulfilled long-standing U.S. policies.  Under the aegis of President Thomas Jefferson, The Corps of Discovery, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, prepared the first maps and reports describing the topography of the trails and passages…