Elizabeth Van Lew was a Union spy with a house on Church Hill in Richmond, Virginia, close to the Libby Prison.  She had always done her best to aid the comfort of the Union prisoners there openly when she could, and had maintained clandestine contact with them.  When 109 Union officers tunneled out of the prison and escaped, Van Lew sheltered a number of them in her house, several of them for up to two weeks.  (By John Osborne)  

During the night, 109 Union officers tunnelled out of the notorious Libby Prison into the streets of Richmond, Virginia in one of the largest mass escapes of the war.  Given a start by comrades in Libby keeping their departure secret for as long as they could, and with many knowing the terrain from earlier campaigns, fifty nine escapees reached Union lines. Forty eight others were recaptured and two drowned crossing a river.  (By John Osborne) 

President Lincoln, unimpressed with the overall progress of the war after Gettysburg, named Ulysses Grant as the field commander of all the Union armies, with the rank of Lieutenant-General, last held by George Washington.  The president accomplished this action in a ceremony at the White House on March 9 and with formal orders signed on March 12, 1864. General Henry Halleck, who had been commanding all Union forces since late spring 1862, was now named as chief of staff and remained in Washington to take care of administrative duties.  (By John Osborne)

A train on the Grand Trunk Railroad from Quebec City to Montreal approached the St. Hilaire Swing Bridge over the Richelieu River near Montreal an hour or so after midnight unaware that the bridge had been opened to allow the passage of river traffic.  The train and its eleven carriages, carrying mostly immigrants, crashed into the river killing ninety-nine people and injuring around a hundred more. To this day, no Canadian train accident has killed more people. (By John Osborne) 

The Swedish chemist and inventor, Alfred Bernhard Nobel, took out his first patent in Stockholm for his working of the explosive nitroglycerine two weeks before his thirtieth birthday.  His father, Emmanuel Nobel, had found a way to make the explosive, discovered earlier in France, safer and usuable.  Accidents still occurred despite this and it was not until Alfred invented dynamite in 1867 that use of the explosive became relatively safe. (By John Osborne)   

Two Union corps advanced on Jackson and Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston decided to evacuate the capital, leaving General John Gregg's force to fight a rearguard action.  Gregg fought through the day and then withdrew as ordered.  Union forces over the next day destroyed installations, causing heavy damage to parts of the town, before withdrawing.  Confederate forces re-entered Jackson on the evening of May 16, 1863.  (By John Osborne) 

The two British explorers, Robert O'Hara Burke and William Wills, had perished in June 1861 during  the return leg from their epic exploration of the interior of Australia north from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria on the north coast. They became Australian national heroes and the Victorian Government ordered their bodies returned to Melbourne where a large state funeral was held with around 40,000 lining the streets of the state capital.  (By John Osborne)