Today in history

On May 9, 1754, a political cartoon in Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette depicted a snake cut into eight pieces, each section representing a part of the American colonies; the caption read, “JOIN, or DIE.”

In 1814, the Jane Austen novel “Mansfield Park” was first published in London.

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 1926, Americans Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett supposedly became the first men to fly over the North Pole. (However, U.S. scholars announced in 1996 that their examination of Byrd’s flight diary suggested he had turned back 150 miles short of his goal.)

In 1936, Italy annexed Ethiopia.

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 on Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific nicknamed “George.”

In 1961, in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton N. Minow decried the majority of television programming as a “vast wasteland.”

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 1994, South Africa’s newly elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela to be the country’s first black president.

Ten years ago: Vice President Dick Cheney pressed Iraq’s leaders to do more to reduce violence and achieve political reconciliation during a trip to Baghdad that was punctuated by an explosion that shook windows at the U.S. Embassy where Cheney was visiting.

Five years ago: President Barack Obama declared his unequivocal support for same-sex marriage in a historic announcement that came three days after Vice President Joe Biden spoke in favor of such unions on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney repeated his opposition to gay marriage, telling reporters in Oklahoma City, “I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.”

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

“There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings.” — Dorothy Thompson, American journalist and author (1894-1961).