MONDAY IN HISTORY

Today is Monday, May 9, the 130th day of 2016. There are 236 days left in the year.

Highlight in History:

On May 9, 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.”

On this date:

In 1754, a political cartoon in Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette depicted a snake cut into eight pieces, each section representing a part of the American colonies; the caption read, “JOIN, or DIE.”

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

In 1926, Americans Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett supposedly became the first men to fly over the NorthPole.

In 1936, Italy annexed Ethiopia.

In 1945, with World War II in Europe at an end, Soviet forces liberated Czechoslovakia from Nazi occupation.

In 1951, the U.S. conducted its first thermonuclear experiment as part of Operation Greenhouse by detonating a 225-kiloton device on Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific nicknamed “George.”

In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee opened public hearings on whether to recommend the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

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

In 1996, President Bill Clinton insisted he had nothing to do with a $300,000 loan at the heart of a criminal case against his former Whitewater partners.

Ten years ago: Freed by rescuers drilling round-the-clock by hand, two men walked out of an Australian mine where they had been trapped for two weeks by an earthquake.

Five years ago: Former House Speaker Ne wt Gingrich announced on social networking websites that he was running for the Republican presidential nomination.

One year ago: North Korea said it had successfully testfired a newly developed ballistic missile froma submarine.

Today’s Birthdays: Actorwriter Alan Bennett is 82. Producer-director James L. Brooks is 79. Actress Candice Bergen is 70. Singer Billy Joel is 67. Rapper Ghostface Killah is 46. Actress Rosario Dawson is 37.

Thought for Today: “Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.” — JoseOrtega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher (born this date in 1883, diedin1955).