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ON MAY 8 ...

In 1541 , Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto discovered the Mississippi River south of present-day Memphis, Tenn.

In 1794 Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, was executed by guillotine during France’s Reign of Terror.

In 1828 Swiss philanthropist Jean Henri Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, was born in Geneva.

In 1884 Harry Truman, the 33rd president, was born near Lamar, Mo.

In 1886 Atlanta pharmacist John Styth Pemberton created the flavoring syrup for Coca-Cola.

In 1926 comedian Don Rickles was born in New York.

In 1932 boxing champion Sonny Liston was born in St. Francis County, Ark.

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In 1936 James R. Thompson, who would become governor of Illinois (1976-90), was born in Chicago.

In 1945, in a radio address, President Harry Truman declared V-E (Victory in Europe) Day, announcing the surrender of Germany and officially ending the European phase of World War II.

In 1958 Vice President Richard Nixon was stoned, shoved, booed and spat upon by anti-American demonstrators in Lima, Peru.

In 1973 militant American Indians surrendered after holding the South Dakota hamlet of Wounded Knee for 71 days. (Wounded Knee was the site of the Army’s 1890 massacre of 300 Native Americans.)

In 1978 David Berkowitz pleaded guilty in a Brooklyn courtroom to six murder charges in the ``Son of Sam’’ shootings that had terrified New Yorkers.

In 1987 Gary Hart, dogged by reports about his relationship with Miami model Donna Rice, withdrew from the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In 1999 The Citadel, South Carolina’s formerly all-male military school, graduated its first female cadet, Nancy Ruth Mace.

In 2002 FBI Director Robert Mueller told a Senate committee that an FBI memo from Phoenix warning that several Arabs were suspiciously training at a U.S. aviation school would not have led officials to the 9/11 hijackers even if they had followed up the warning with more vigor.

In 2003 the Michigan Wolverines were barred from the next postseason play and put on 3½ years’ probation by the NCAA for a booster’s payments to players dating to the Fab Five era.

In 2006 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote to President George W. Bush, proposing “new solutions” to their differences in the first letter from an Iranian head of state to an American president in 27 years. Also in 2006 stunt artist David Blaine emerged weak and wrinkly from a week spent submerged within an eight-foot snow globe-like tank in the plaza of New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—but without a world record for holding his breath.

In 2008 Silvio Berlusconi was sworn in as Italy’s premier. Also in 2008 country music star Eddy Arnold died near Nashville; he was 89.

In 2013 census data showed that blacks voted in the 2012 election at a higher rate than whites for the first time in a presidential election. Also in 2013 an Arizona jury convicted Jodi Arias of first-degree murder in the death of her ex-boyfriend in 2008. (She later received life in prison.)