THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Today is Tuesday, May 7, the 128th day of 2024. There are 238 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On May 7, 1945, Nazi Germany signed an unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in Rheims (rams), France, ending its role in World War II.
On this date:
In 1889, the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore opened its doors.
In 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the British liner RMS Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans, out of the nearly 2,000 on board.
In 1928, the minimum voting age for British women was lowered from 30 to 21 — the same age as men.
In 1939, Germany and Italy announced a military and political alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis.
In 1941, Glenn Miller and His Orchestra recorded “Chattanooga Choo Choo” for RCA Victor.
In 1954, the 55-day Battle of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam ended with Vietnamese insurgents overrunning French forces.
In 1963, the United States launched the Telstar 2 communications satellite.
In 1975, President Gerald R. Ford formally declared an end to the “Vietnam era.” In Ho Chi Minh City — formerly Saigon — the Viet Cong celebrated its takeover.
In 1977, Seattle Slew won the Kentucky Derby, the first of his Triple Crown victories.
In 2010, a BP-chartered vessel lowered a 100-ton concreteand-steel vault onto the ruptured Deepwater Horizon well in an unprecedented, and ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to stop most of the gushing crude fouling the sea.
In 2012, Vladimir Putin took the oath of office as Russia’s president for the next six years in a brief but regal Kremlin ceremony.
In 2013, movie special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen died in London at age 92.
In 2020, Georgia authorities arrested a white father and son and charged them with murder in the February shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man they had pursued in a truck after spotting him running in their neighborhood near the port city of Brunswick. (The two men and a third white man would be convicted of murder in state court, and hate crimes in federal court.)