EVENTS
- 1541 – Hernando de Soto reaches the Mississippi River.
- 1886 – Coca-Cola is invented.
- 1927 – The White Bird and its crew mysteriously disappear. French aviators, Charles Nungesser and François Coli, had taken off from Paris in their Levasseur PL.8 biplane in an attempt to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight. Their disappearance remains a mystery. Charles Lindbergh succeeded two weeks later.
- 1941 – Paramount Pictures is formed.
- 1942 – During World War II in the Pacific, the Battle of the Coral Sea began in which Japan would suffer its first defeat of the war. The battle, fought off New Guinea, marked the first time in history that two opposing naval forces fought by only using aircraft without the opposing ships ever sighting each other.
Battle of the Coral Sea - 1945 – A second German surrender ceremony was held in Berlin. Soviet Russia’s leader Josef Stalin had refused to recognize the German surrender document signed a day earlier at Reims. This time, German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signed the surrender document which declared, as did the first, that hostilities would end as of 12:01 a.m. on May 9th.
- 1945 – VE Day. German forces agree to an unconditional surrender.
- 1970 – The Beatles release the album “Let It Be”. The recording was the last studio album ever released by the legendary English rock band.
- 1978 – Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler climb Mount Everest without oxygen supply. Prior to the Italian and Austrian mountaineers’ ascent, it was thought to be impossible to conquer the world’s highest mountain without supplemental oxygen.
- 1984 – Moscow announces that the USSR will not take part in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Several other countries, such as Cuba, Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Ethiopia, Eastern Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Vietnam joined the boycott. Four years earlier, the United States had not sent any athletes to the Summer Olympics in Moscow.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1828 – International Red Cross founder and Nobel Prize winner Henri Dunant (1828-1910) was born in Geneva, Switzerland
- 1884 – Harry S. Truman (33rd US President)
- 1911 – Robert Johnson (American singer-songwriter, guitarist)
- 1926 – David Attenborough (English television host)
- 1926 – Don Rickles (Comedian)
- 1940 – Tony Tenille (Singer)
- 1945 – Keith Jarrett (American pianist, composer)
- 1964 – Melissa Gilbert (Actress from Little House on the Prairie)
- 1964 – Bobby Labonte (NASCAR race car driver)
- 1970 – Naomi Klein (Canadian author, activist)
- 1975 – Enrique Iglesias (Singer)
Enrique Iglesias
DEATHS
- 1873 – John Stuart Mill (English economist, civil servant, philosopher)
John Stuart Mill - 1891 – Helena Blavatsky (Russian scholar, theosophist)
- 1903 – Paul Gauguin (French painter)
- 1988 – Robert A. Heinlein (American writer)
- 1990 – Luigi Nono (Italian composer)
