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German gliders land on a fortress roof before dawn; Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands are invaded

Hollow charges crack the gun turrets at Fort Eben-Emael by 4 a.m., as Wehrmacht ground forces cross three frontiers simultaneously under Case Yellow.

Before dawn on May 10, 1940, Belgian military headquarters in Brussels received the alarm at 12:10 a.m. By 4:00 a.m., German aircraft were striking airfields and communication centers across the country. Wehrmacht ground forces crossed the frontier under operational plan Fall Gelb — Case Yellow — simultaneously invading Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The opening blow fell on Fort Eben-Emael, a fortress guarding the Albert Canal, where German glider troops landed directly on its flat rooftop using hollow-charge explosives to crack the gun turrets. The Belgian Army, 600,000 strong, had eighteen days to fight…

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More from May 10
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Allen and Arnold take Ticonderoga; not a shot is fired

83 Green Mountain Boys cross Lake Champlain before dawn and walk out with a British fort's entire stockpile of heavy artillery.
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Twelve colonies convene in Philadelphia; no army, no treasury, a war already begun

Delegates gather at the Pennsylvania State House three weeks after Lexington and Concord, with no authority from the Crown and no clear path forward.
1946

A V-2 rises over White Sands; America fires a German rocket on its own soil for the first time

The missile that killed an estimated 9,000 civilians in London and Antwerp flies without a warhead, guided by manuals translated from German, as its builders work nearby under Operation Paperclip.
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Lord North's bill rescues the East India Company's eighteen million pounds of unsold stock, but colonists see the bargain price as bait to make them accept Parliament's right to tax.
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More from The World Wars
1942

Dive bombers sink three Japanese carriers in six minutes; a fourth falls before dark

Cryptanalysts cracked Tokyo's naval code and fed the enemy a lie about a water shortage, and Nagumo's flight decks are crowded with fueled, armed planes when the Americans arrive.
1935

Dr. Bob Smith takes his last drink, then walks into surgery

The Akron surgeon, sober after hours of talk with New York businessman Bill Wilson, steps into the operating room following a final relapse at an Atlantic City convention.
1942

Japanese submarine shells Fort Stevens; Doney orders blackout, holds his guns

Commander Tagami surfaces I-25 at the Columbia River mouth after dark, fires seventeen rounds, and slips away undamaged, leaving cut telephone lines on the Oregon coast.
1942

Congress makes the Pledge of Allegiance official, fifty years after a magazine wrote it

The wording, unchanged from Bellamy's 1892 Columbus Day campaign, is now federal law, with the United States seven months into war.
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