Saturday, May 9, 1998
Today's events
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Vice President Al Gore delivers the commencement address at South Carolina State University.
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On the horizon
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On Sunday, May 10, national elections will be held in Hungary.
Monday, May 11, is the scheduled deadline for U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to decide whether to seek an independent counsel to investigate Labor
Secretary Alexis Herman.
On Tuesday, May 12, the Cannes Film Festival opens in France.
On Wednesday, May 13, a hearing on whether convicted Oklahoma City bombing
co-conspirator Terry Nichols should pay restitution to bombing
survivors and victims' famililies will be held in Denver.
On Thursday, May 14, the final episode of "Seinfeld" will air on NBC.
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On this day
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In 1386, England and Portugal signed the Treaty of Windsor,
pledging permanent alliance and friendship.
In 1502, Christopher Columbus set out from Cadiz, Spain, on
his fourth and last voyage.
In 1657, William Bradford, pilgrim father and governor of
Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts for 30 years, died.
In 1671, Thomas Blood, Irish adventurer better known as
Captain Blood, stole the crown jewels from the Tower of London.
In 1785, British inventor Joseph Bramah patented the beer-pump
handle.
In 1800, John Brown, militant U.S. anti-slavery campaigner,
was born. In 1859, he seized the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry,
Virginia, hoping to encourage an uprising of slaves. No response
came and federal troops recovered the arsenal.
In 1805, Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, German
romantic poet and playwright, died.
In 1846, Zachary Taylor with 1,700 U.S. troops beat back 5,700
Mexicans under Arista at the battle of Resaca de la Palma and
went on to recover Fort Texas in the U.S.-Mexican Wars.
In 1850, Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, French chemist and
physicist, died. He established that all gases expand equally
with heat.
In 1873, Howard Carter, British archaeologist, was born; he
discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamen in Egypt in 1922.
In 1901, Australia opened its first parliament in Melbourne.
In 1915, in World War I, the battle of Artois began. When the
battle ended on May 27, 216,000 men had been killed or wounded.
In 1926, Americans Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett became the
first to fly over the North Pole.
In 1927, the new city of Canberra replaced Melbourne as
Australia's capital.
In 1931, Albert Michelson, U.S. physicist who established that
light has a constant speed, died. In 1907, he won the Nobel Prize
for Physics.
In 1936, Italy formally annexed Abyssinia, now Ethiopia.
In 1945, Germany's Field Marshal Keitel signed final surrender
documents at the end of World War II; the German garrison in
the Channel Islands surrendered on the same day.
In 1946, King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy abdicated and the
monarchy was replaced by a republic.
In 1949, Prince Louis II of Monaco died shortly after
delegating his powers to Prince Rainier, who began his reign on
April 11, 1950.
In 1960, the United States became the first country to
legalize the birth control pill.
In 1963, a state of emergency was declared in British Guiana
following a three-week general strike.
In 1965, Lunar 5, an unmanned Soviet spacecraft, was launched
toward the moon from a rocket already in Earth's orbit. It
later crashed on the moon rather than making the projected soft
landing.
In 1967, Dr. Zakir Hussain was elected president of India.
In 1976, Ulrike Meinhof, a leader of the West German
Baader-Meinhof terrorist group, hanged herself in prison.
In 1978, the body of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro
was found in the trunk of a car; he had been kidnapped and murdered by the Red Brigades.
In 1979, 18 people were killed when troops opened fire on
terrorists occupying San Salvador cathedral in El Salvador.
In 1980, Pope John Paul II and the Archbishop of Canterbury
met for the first time in Ghana.
In 1985, Edmund O'Brien, U.S. film actor, died. He won an
Academy Award for best supporting actor in "The Barefoot
Contessa" (1954) and was nominated for another Oscar for
"Seven Days in May" (1964).
In 1986, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay died; he shared with Edmund
Hillary the achievement of being the first to reach the summit
of Mount Everest in 1953.
In 1991, William Kennedy Smith, nephew of Edward Kennedy, was
charged with rape.
In 1993, Paraguay held its first presidential and
parliamentary elections for nearly 50 years.
In 1995, world leaders marked the 50th anniversary of the end
of World War II in Europe with three days of emotional Victory
Day celebrations and ringing calls for global reconciliation.
In 1996, the National Party, which inflicted apartheid on
South Africa and later helped break the hated system, decided to quit
Nelson Mandela's 2-year-old government of national unity,
effective June 30.
In 1996, President Yoweri Museveni won a landslide victory in
Uganda's first presidential election in 16 years.
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Newslink
Holidays and more
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It is Victory Day in Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, the Russian Federation, Turkmenistan and Ukraine.
Actress Candice Bergen ("Murphy Brown") is 52.
Screenwriter and producer James L. Brooks ("As Good As It Gets," "The Simpsons") is 58.
Actor Albert Finney ("Shoot the Moon") is 62.
Actress Glenda Jackson ("Women in Love") is 61.
Singer Billy Joel ("Piano Man") is 49.
TV journalist Mike Wallace ("60 Minutes") is 80.
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Sources: Associated Press,
Chase's Calendar of Events 1998, J.P. Morgan
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