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.
A federal bankruptcy judge frees United Airlines from responsibility for pensions covering 120,000 employees. – 2005.
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.
Nearly 10,000 IWW dock workers strike in Philadelphia. – 1913.
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.
May 14
One year after the United States doubled its territory with the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark Expedition leaves St. Louis, Mo., on a mission to explore the Northwest from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. – 1804.
In Tel Aviv, Jewish Agency chairman David Ben-Gurion proclaims the State of Israel, which establishes the first Jewish state in 2,000 years. – 1948.
Skylab, America’s first space station, is successfully launched into an orbit around the earth. – 1973.
May 15
U.S. president John Adams orders the federal government to pack up and leave Philadelphia and establish the Nation’s new capital in Washington, D.C.. – 1800.
The Seven Years War, a global conflict known in America as the French and Indian War, officially begins when England declares war on France. However, fighting and skirmishes between England and France had been going on in North America for many years. – 1756.
More than eight years after they intervened in Afghanistan to support the pro-communist government, Soviet troops begin their withdrawal. The event marks the beginning of the end to a long, bloody, and fruitless Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. – 1988.