This Week In History
May 6, 2016
Kim Jong-un was elevated to party chairman at North Korea’s first party congress in 36 years, vowing to expand his nuclear arsenal despite UN sanctions
1733: Englishman Bob Whittaker beat Italian Tito de Carni in the first ever international boxing match 1998: Astronomers reported a huge explosion that took place at the edge of the universe 12 billion years ago
2013: Three women abducted a decade earlier were rescued from a house in Cleveland, Ohio 2017: In Nigeria Boko Haram released 82 of the 276 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped in 2014 May 7, 2017 Emmanuel Macron won a landslide victory in the second round of France’s presidential election, becoming the youngest French leader since Napoleon
1823: Beethoven conducted the first performance of his Ninth Symphony, despite his deafness 1888: George Eastman unveiled his easy-to-use box camera, the Kodak
1973: Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward won the Pulitzer Prize for their work in exposing the Watergate scandal 1988: The first gathering of people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens was hosted in Boston, US
May 8, 1978
Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler became the first climbers to scale Mount Everest without using supplementary oxygen equipment
1973: The siege of Wounded Knee ended peacefully as Native Americans surrendered after almost 10 weeks 2003: The WHO reported that SARS had been found in 31 countries, with new cases in Taiwan and Russia
2008: Myanmar authorities refused to allow in a delivery of vital food aid following Cyclone Nargis 2008: Ping-pong diplomacy returned when China’s President Hu Jintao played table tennis on a visit to Japan
May 9, 1988
Australia’s new Parliament House was inaugurated at a ceremony in Canberra attended by Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Bob Hawke
1998: Transexual singer Dana International scored Israel’s first ever win in the Eurovision Song Contest 2001: The diary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, was sold in New York for US$170,000 2015: The World Health Organization declared Liberia Ebola-free, after 42 days with no new cases recorded 2017: President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, who was investigating Trump’s election campaign
May 10, 1908
The first Mother’s Day was observed in the US state of West Virginia. Social reformer Anna Jarvis created the holiday on the anniversary of her mother’s death
1933: Nazis gathered in Berlin to burn “un-German” books by Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and others 1968: The French government bowed to student demands after the worst street fighting since WWII
1975: Sony introduced the Betamax video recorder. It was outperformed by VHS and both later gave way to DVDs 2017: Moon Jae-in was elected president of South Korea after the impeachment of Park Geun-hye
May 11, 868
The earliest complete example of a dated printed book, an influential Buddhist text known as the Diamond Sutra, was published in China
1956: Elvis Presley first entered the UK charts with Heartbreak Hotel 1981: Jamaican singersongwriter Bob Marley, who popularised reggae around the world, died of cancer at the age of 36
1997: World chess champion Gary Kasparov was beaten by IBM’s Deep Blue computer 2010: Morocco closed 10 airports as Iceland’s erupting volcano continued to disrupt air travel
May 12, 2008
A powerful 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit the Chinese province of Sichuan, killing around 87,000 people and leaving five million homeless 1588: The people of France forced Henri III to flee Paris on the “Day of the Barricades” 1885: The linotype machine was patented, replacing hand-set metal letters with entire lines of lead type
2004: The discovery of the Library of Alexandria, thought to be the world’s oldest university, was announced 2016: Brazil’s Senate voted to begin impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff