TODAY IN HISTORY

MONDAY MAY 9, 2022 1994

South Africa’s newly elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela to be the country’s first Black president.

1860

Writer J.M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, was born in Kirriemuir, Scotland.

1914

President Woodrow Wilson, acting on a joint congressional resolution, signed a proclamation designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

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.

1951

The U.S. conducted its first thermonuclear experiment as part of Operation Greenhouse by detonating a 225-kiloton device on Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific nicknamed “George.”

1962

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology succeeded in reflecting a laser beam off the surface of the moon.

1965

Russian-born American pianist Vladimir Horowitz performed publicly for the first time in 12years with a recital at Carnegie Hall in New York.

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.

1974

The House Judiciary Committee opened public hearings on whether to recommend the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

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.

2016

Filipinos went to the polls to elect Rodrigo Duterte, the controversial, toughtalking mayor of Davao city, to be their country’s next president.

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.