TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS MONDAY, MAY 9, the 129th day of 2022. There are 236 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 1994, South Africa’s newly elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela to be the country’s first Black president.
In 1860, writer J.M. Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, was born in Kirriemuir, Scotland.
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 1945, with World War II in Europe at an end, Soviet forces liberated Czechoslovakia from Nazi occupation. U.S. officials announced that a midnight entertainment curfew was being lifted immediately.
In 1951, the U.S. conducted its first thermonuclear experiment as part of Operation Greenhouse by detonating a 225-kiloton device nicknamed “George” on Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific. In 1962, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology succeeded in reflecting a laser beam off the surface of the moon.
In 1965, Russian-born American pianist Vladimir Horowitz performed publicly for the first time in 12 years with a recital at Carnegie Hall in New York.
In 1970, President Richard Nixon made a surprise and impromptu pre-dawn visit to the Lincoln Memorial, where he chatted with a group of protesters who’d been resting on the Memorial steps after protests against the Vietnam War and the Kent State shootings.
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 1980, 35 people were killed when a freighter rammed the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay in Florida, causing a 1,400-foot section of the southbound span to collapse.
In 2016, Filipinos went to the polls to elect Rodrigo Duterte, the controversial, tough-talking mayor of Davao city, to be their country’s next president.
In 2019, Pope Francis issued a groundbreaking new church law requiring all Catholic priests and nuns to report clergy sexual abuse and cover-ups by their superiors to church authorities. In 2020, the Food and Drug Administration approved a coronavirus antigen test that could quickly detect virus proteins from swabs swiped inside the naval cavity. Rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Little Richard, known for his piercing wail, pounding piano and towering pompadour, died in Tennessee at the age of 87 after battling bone cancer; he had helped shatter the color line on the music charts while introducing Black R&B to white America.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actor-writer Alan Bennett is 88. Actor and politician Glenda Jackson is 86. Actor Candice Bergen and pop singer Clint Holmes are 76. Actor Anthony Higgins is 75. Singer Billy Joel and blues singer-musician Bob Margolin are 73. Rock singer-musician Tom Petersson (Cheap Trick) is 72. Actor Alley Mills is 71. Actor Amy Hill is 69. Actor Wendy Crewson is 66. Actor John Corbett is 61. Singer Dave Gahan (GAHN) (Depeche Mode) is 60. Actor Sonja Sohn is 58. Rapper Ghostface Killah is 52. Actor Chris Diamantopoulos (dy-uh-MAN’-toh-POO’-lehs) is 47. R&B singer Tamia (tuh-MEE’-ah) is 47. Actor Daniel Franzese is 44. Rock singer Pierre Bouvier (Simple Plan) is 43. Actor Rosario Dawson is 43. Rock singer Andrew W.K. is 43. Actor Rachel Boston is 40. Actor Grace Gummer is 36.