This day in history
Today is Monday, May 8, the 128th day of 2023. There are 237 days left in the year.
Birthdays: Naturalist David Attenborough is 97. Singer Toni Tennille is 83. Actor James Mitchum is 82. Jazz pianist Keith Jarrett is 78. Earth, Wind and Fire singer Philip Bailey is 72. Rock drummer Chris Frantz (Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club) is 72. Rock drummer Alex Van Halen is 70. Actor David Keith is 69. Former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio is 62. Singer Enrique Iglesias is 48. Blues singer-guitarist Joe Bonamassa is 46. Actor Nora Anezeder is 34.
▶ In 1846, the first major battle of the Mexican-American War was fought at Palo Alto, Texas; US forces led by General Zachary Taylor were able to beat back Mexican forces.
▶ In 1873, Amherst College junior Melvil Dewey proposed to the faculty a reorganization of the college library using a simple, standardized system he created for cataloguing. The faculty agreed; within a decade, the Dewey Decimal System had been adopted in libraries across the country.
▶ In 1945, President Truman announced on radio that Nazi Germany’s forces had surrendered, and that “the flags of freedom fly all over Europe.”
▶ In 1972, President Nixon announced that he had ordered the mining of Haiphong Harbor during the Vietnam War.
▶ In 1973, militant American Indians who had held the South Dakota hamlet of Wounded Knee for 10 weeks surrendered.
▶ In 1978, David R. Berkowitz pleaded guilty in a Brooklyn courtroom to murder, attempted murder, and assault in connection with the “Son of Sam” shootings that claimed six lives and terrified New Yorkers. (Berkowitz was sentenced to six consecutive life prison terms.)
▶ In 1993, the Muslim-led government of Bosnia-Herzegovina and rebel Bosnian Serbs signed an agreement for a nationwide cease-fire.
▶ In 1996, South Africa took another step from apartheid to democracy by adopting a constitution that guaranteed equal rights for Blacks and whites.
▶ In 2003, the Senate unanimously endorsed adding to NATO seven former communist nations: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
▶ In 2018, President Trump withdrew the US from the nuclear accord with Iran and restored harsh sanctions; Trump had been a severe critic of the deal negotiated by the Obama administration in which Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program.
▶ In 2020, the unemployment level surged to 14.7 percent, a level last seen when the country was in the throes of the Great Depression; the government reported that 20 million Americans had lost their jobs in April amid the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
▶ Last year, a Russian bomb destroyed a school sheltering about 90 people in eastern Ukraine, killing as many as 60 people. The governor of Luhansk province said 30 people were rescued from the rubble of the school in the village of Bilohorivka.