May 7
Martinique’s Mount Pele, near the city of Saint Pierre, begins the deadliest volcanic eruption of the 20th Century. The city of Saint Pierre was buried within minutes and virtually everyone died instantly. – 1902.
The German High Command, in the person of General Alfred Jodl, signs the unconditional surrender of all German forces, East and West, at Reims, in northwestern France. – 1945.
May 8
Both Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory Day in Europe. Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in Western Europe, put out flags and banners and rejoice in the defeat of the Nazi war machine. – 1945.
Approximately 200 construction workers in New York City attack a crowd of Vietnam War protesters four days after the Kent University State killings by the Ohio National Guard. More than 70 were injured, including four police officers. Peter Brennan, head of the New York building trades, honored at the Nixon White House two weeks later, eventually was named Secretary of Labor. – 1970.
May 9
U.S. president Woodrow Wilson issues a presidential proclamation that officially establishes the first National Mother’s Day holiday to celebrate America’s mothers. – 1914.
May 10
Thanks to an army of thousands of Chinese and Irish immigrants, who laid 2,000 miles of track, the Nation’s first transcontinental railway line is finished by the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines at Promontory Point, Utah. – 1869.
U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes has the White House’s first telephone installed in the telegraph room. The White House phone number was 1. President Hayes rarely received phone calls because the Treasury Department possessed the only other direct phone line to the White House. – 1877.
May 11
Nationwide railway strike begins in Pullman, Ill. and 260,000 railroad workers ultimately joined the strike to protest wage cuts by the Pullman Palace Car Co. in what is now a part of the South Side of Chicago. – 1894.
A massive storm sends millions of tons of topsoil flying from across the parched Great Plains region of the United States to as far east as New York, Boston, and Atlanta. This storm is one of the worst, and far reaching storms of the Dust Bowl. – 1934.
U.S. and South Vietnamese forces engage in a battle with North Vietnamese troops for Ap Bia Mountain (Hill 937), one mile east of the Laotian border during the Vietnam War. During intense fighting, 597 North Vietnamese were reported killed and U.S. casualties were 56 killed and 420 wounded. Due to the bitter fighting and the high loss of life, the battle for Ap Bia Mountain was dubbed Hamburger Hill by the U.S. media. – 1969.
Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov resigns after 19 moves in a game against Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer developed by scientists at IBM. – 1997.
May 12
The dead body of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh’s baby is found more than two months after he was kidnapped from his family’s Hopewell, N.J., mansion. Lindbergh, who became the first worldwide celebrity five years earlier when he flew The Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic Ocean, and his wife, Anne, discovered a ransom note in their 20-month-old child’s empty room March 1. The ransom note demanded $50,000 in barely literate English. – 1932.
May 13
The U.S. Congress overwhelmingly votes in favor of U.S. president James K. Polk’s request to declare war on Mexico in a dispute over Texas. Under the threat of war, the United States had refrained from annexing Texas after the latter won independence from Mexico in 1836. – 1846.
During a goodwill trip in 1958 through Latin America, vice president Richard Nixon’s car is attacked by an angry crowd and nearly overturned while traveling through Caracas, Venezuela. – 1958.
Pope John Paul II is shot and wounded at St. Peter’s Square in Rome, Italy. A Turkish terrorist, an escaped fugitive already convicted of a previous murder, fired several shots at the religious leader, two of which wounded nearby tourists. – 1981.
Thousands of yellow cab drivers in New York City go on a one-day strike in protest of proposed new regulations. “City officials were stunned by the (strike’s) success,” The New York Times reported. – 1998.