Sometimes you just need a quick mental_floss snack between meals (or classes or meetings). Now you can look for The Quick 10 every day—a little nibble of smarts to get you through your afternoon. Plus, you can rattle off these quick facts and impress your friends/co-workers. Bon appetit!

10 Other Things That Happened on Cinco de Mayo

1. 1494 - Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Jamaica and claimed it for Spain.
2. 1809 - Mary Kies became the first woman awarded a U.S. patent, for a technique of weaving straw with silk and thread.
3. 1818 - Karl Marx, German political philosopher, was born.
4. 1821 - Napoleon I of France died.
5. 1865 - The first U.S. train robbery takes place in North Bend, Ohio.
6. 1891 - Carnegie Hall in NYC opens for the first time. Tchaikovsky was the guest conductor.
7. 1904 - Cy Young of the Boston Americans throws the first perfect game in the modern era of baseball.
8. 1925 - John T. Scopes is served an arrest warrant for teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act.
9. 1961 - Alan B. Shepard, Jr., became America’s first space traveler when he made a 15-minute suborbital flight in a capsule launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
10. 1982 - A Unabomber bomb explodes in the computer science department at Vanderbilt University; secretary Janet Smith is injured.