Today’s highlight in history

On May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson, acting on a joint congressional resolution, signed a proclamation designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

On this date

In 1814, the Jane Austen novel “Mansfield Park” was first published in London.

In 1926, Americans Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett supposedly became the first men to fly over the North Pole. (However, U.S. scholars announced in 1996 that their examination of Byrd’s flight diary suggested he had turned back 150 miles short of his goal.) In 1936, Italy annexed Ethiopia. In 1945, U.S. officials announced that a midnight entertainment curfew was being lifted immediately.

In 1961, in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton N. Minow decried the majority of television programming as a “vast wasteland.”

In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee opened public hearings on whether to recommend the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. (The committee ended up adopting three articles of impeachment against the president, who resigned before the full House took up any of them.)

In 1994, South Africa’s newly elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela to be the country’s first black president.

Ten years ago: Pope Benedict XVI began his first papal trip to Latin America as he arrived in Brazil.

Five years ago: President Barack Obama declared his unequivocal support for same-sex marriage in a historic announcement that came three days after Vice President Joe Biden spoke in favor of such unions on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

One year ago: Filipinos went to the polls to elect Rodrigo Duterte, the controversial, tough-talking mayor of Davao city, to be their country’s next president.

ASSOCIATED PRESS Richard Byrd, hailed as a national hero as the first person to fly over the North Pole in 1926, poses in front of a Fokker plane used for his expedition. It turns out that Byrd might have been just short of his goal.

ASSOCIATED PRESS President Richard M. Nixon is shown pointing to the transcripts of the White House tapes in 1974. Nixon resigned before the House could take up impeachment.