This Day in History – May 8, 2011

1541 – Hernando de Soto reached the Mississippi River. He called it Rio de Espiritu Santo. 1794 – Antoine Lavoisier was executed by guillotine. He was the French chemist that discovered oxygen. 1794 – The United States Post Office was established. 1847 – The rubber tire was patented by Robert W. Thompson. 1879 – George Selden applied for the first automobile patent. 1886 – Pharmacist Dr. John Styth Pemberton invented what would later be called “Coca-Cola.” 1914 – The U.S. Congress passed a Joint Resolution that designated the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. 1915 – H.P. Whitney’s Regret became the first filly to win the Kentucky Derby. 1919 – The first transatlantic flight took-off by a navy seaplane. 1921 – Sweden abolished capital punishment. 1933 – Gandhi began a hunger strike to protest British oppression in India. 1945 – U.S. President Harry Truman announced that World War II had ended in Europe. 1958 – U.S. President Eisenhower ordered the National Guard out of Little Rock as Ernest Green became the first black to graduate from an Arkansas public school. 1959 – Mike and Marian Ilitch founded “Little Caesars Pizza Treat”. 1961 – New Yorkers selected a new name for their new National League baseball franchise. They chose the Mets. 1967 – Muhammad Ali was indicted for refusing induction in U.S. Army. 1970 – Construction workers broke up an anti-war protest on New York City’s Wall Street. 1973 – Militant American Indians who had held the South Dakota hamlet of Wounded Knee for 10 weeks surrendered. 1978 – David R. Berkowitz, known as the “Son of Sam,” pled guilty to six murder charges. 1984 – The Soviet Union announced that they would not participate in the 1984 Summer Olympics Games in Los Angeles. 1984 – Joanie (Erin Moran) and Chachi (Scott Baio) got married on ABC-TV’s “Happy Days.” 1985 – “New Coke” was released to the public on the 99th anniversary of Coca-Cola. 1986 – Reporters were told that 84,000 people had been evacuated from areas near the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Soviet Ukraine. 1999 – The first female cadet graduated from The Citadel military college.]]]]> ]]>