On May 9th...

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1386 The Treaty of Windsor between Portugal and England was signed, making it the oldest diplomatic alliance in the world which is still in force.

1439 Pope Pius III was born.

1671 Colonel Thomas Blood attempted to steal the British Crown Jewels.

1689 King William III of England declared war on France.

1753 King Louis XV disbanded the French Parliament.

1754 The first newspaper cartoon in America was published, depicting a divided snake with the words "Join or Die."

1775 Vermont's Green Mountain Boys captured Fort Ticonderoga.

1785 Joseph Bramah patented a beer-pump handle.

1800 Abolitionist John Brown was born.

1837 The ship Sherrod burned in the Mississippi River below Natchez, Mississippi, killing 175 persons.

1860 Author J.M. Barrie was born.

1862 The U. S. Naval Academy was relocated from Annapolis, Maryland, to Newport, Rhode Island.

1864 Union General John Sedgwick became the highest ranked casualty of the Civil War when he was killed by a sniper's bullet.

1865 U. S. President Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation declaring the end of the Civil War.

1868 The city of Reno, Nevada, was founded.

1874 Archaeologist Howard Carter was born.

1877 Romania declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire.

1882 The Telegraph Hill Rail Road Company was organized in San Francisco, California.

1889 Thomas Kiley rode Spokane to victory in the Kentucky Derby.

1893 The Edison Company publicly demonstrated the Kinetoscope.

1901 The first Australian Parliament opened in Melbourne.

1914 John McCabe rode Old Rosebud to victory in the Kentucky Derby.
1914 Singer Hank Snow was born.
1914 Cereal company founder C. W. Post died.

1918 American politician Orville Freeman was born.
1918 Television news correspondent Mike Wallace was born.

1925 The cornerstone for Hebrew University was laid in Jerusalem, Israel.

1926 Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett became the first men to fly to the North Pole.

1927 Canberra officially replaced Melbourne as the capital of Australia.

1931 Astronaut Vance Brand was born.

1939 Kateri Tekakwitha became the first Native American to be beatified by the Catholic Church.

1942 American politician John Ashcroft was born.

1945 Czechoslovakia was liberated from the Germans.

1946 King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy abdicated.
1946 The first hour long entertainment TV show, "NBC's Hour Glass," premiered.
1946 Actress Candice Bergen was born.

1949 Singer Billy Joel was born.

1958 The film Vertigo was released.

1960 The United States legalized the birth control pill.

1962 A laser beam was successfully bounced off the Moon for the first time.
1962 A Brazilian Convair crashed in flames and exploded while landing at Vitória, Brazil, killing 24 of the 27 persons aboard.

1970 Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial was dedicated.
1970 Tens of thousands of people held an anti-war protest in Washington, D.C.
1970 Walter P. Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers, was killed in a plane crash in Michigan.

1977 Fire destroyed the Hotel Poland in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and killed 33 persons.

1980 Thirty-five motorists were killed when a Liberian freighter rammed a bridge over Tampa Bay, Florida.

1986 Tenzing Norgay, Nepalese sherpa during Edmund Hillary's ascent of Mount Everest, died.

1987 A Polish jetliner crashed in Warsaw, Poland, killing 183 persons.

1989 Singer Keith Whitley died.

1992 The final episode of "Golden Girls" aired on NBC-TV.

1993 A landslide in Nambija, Ecuador, killed about 300 people.

1997 The first U. S. Ambassador to Vietnam since the fall of Saigon arrived at his post.

1999 Actress Dana Plato died.

2001 A stampede at the Accra (Ghana) Sports Stadium caused by the firing of teargas by police after a controversial call by a soccer referee killed 129 persons.

2003 Russell Long, former U. S. Senator for Louisiana, died.

2004 Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov was killed by a land mine bomb under a VIP stage during a World War II memorial parade in Grozny.
2004 Comedian Alan King died.

2006 George Preca was canonized as the first ever Maltese saint.

2010 Singer Lena Horne died.

2012 A Russian passenger jet with 45 persons aboard disappeared.
2012 Hair stylist Vidal Sassoon died.

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This page was last updated on August 22, 2018.