May 8
1541: Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto reached the Mississippi River, the first recorded European to do so.
1846: U.S. forces led by Gen. Zachary Taylor defeated Mexican forces near modern-day Brownsville, Texas, in the first major battle of the Mexican American War.
1945: President Harry S. Truman announced in a radio address that Nazi Germany’s forces had surrendered, stating that “the flags of freedom fly all over Europe” on V-E (Victory in Europe) Day.
May 9
1754: The famous political cartoon “Join or Die” was first published by Benjamin Franklin in the Pennsylvania Gazette newspaper.
1914: President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.
1960: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration conditionally approved Enovid for use as the first oral contraceptive pill.
May 10
1775: Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys, along with Col. Benedict Arnold, captured the British-held fortress at Ticonderoga, New York.
1865: Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured by Union forces near Irwinville, Georgia.
1869: A golden spike was driven in Promontory, Utah, marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States.
1924: J. Edgar Hoover was named acting director of the Bureau of Investigation (later known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI).
1994: Nelson Mandela was inaugurated, becoming the first Black president of South Africa.
May 11
1935: The Rural Electrification Administration was created as one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs.
1946: The first CARE packages, sent by a consortium of American charities to provide relief to the hungry of postwar Europe, arrived at Le Havre, France.
1960: Israeli agents captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
1981: Reggae artist Bob Marley died in a Miami hospital at age 36 of acral lentiginous melanoma.
May 12
1780: The besieged city of Charleston, South Carolina, surrendered to British forces in one of the worst American defeats of the Revolutionary War.
1846: The pioneers of the Donner Party left Independence, Missouri on the Oregon Trail, beginning their ill-fated attempt to migrate to California.
1932: The body of Charles Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old kidnapped son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh, was found in a wooded area near Hopewell, New Jersey.
May 13
1846: The United States Congress formally declared war against Mexico.
1940: In his first speech to the House of Commons as British prime minister, Winston Churchill said, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
1981: Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded in St. Peter’s Square by Turkish assailant Mehmet Ali Ağca.
May 14
1607: Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America, was established by members of the Virginia Company.
1804: The Lewis and Clark expedition, organized to explore the Louisiana Territory as well as the Pacific Northwest, began its journey near present-day Hartford, Illinois.
1955: Representatives from eight Communist bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, signed the Warsaw Pact in Poland. (The pact was dissolved in 1991.)
