About May 8
May 8, 2020 is the 129th day of the year 2020 in the Gregorian calendar. There are 237 days remaining until the end of this year. The day of the week is Friday.
You can browse the full year calendar in case you need it.
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Taurus is the sun sign of a person born on this day. Emerald is the modern birthstone for this month. Sapphire is the mystical birthstone from Tibetan origin that dates back over a thousand years.
According to the lunisolar Chinese calendar, there are 280 days remaining before the start of the next Chinese New Year.
What Happened On May 8
- 1846 –Mexican-American War: The Battle of Palo Alto – Zachary Taylor defeats a Mexican force north of the Rio Grande in the first major battle of the war.
- 1886 –Pharmacist John Styth Pemberton first sells a carbonated beverage named “Coca-Cola” as a patent medicine.
- 1899 –The Irish Literary Theatre in Dublin opens.
- 1912 –Paramount Pictures is founded.
- 1924 –the Klaipėda Convention is signed formally incorporating Klaipėda Region (Memel Territory) into Lithuania.
- 1927 –Attempting to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York, French war heroes Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli disappeared after taking off aboard The White Bird biplane.
- 1933 –Mohandas Gandhi begins a 21-day fast in protest against British oppression in India.
- 1942 –World War II: Gunners of the Ceylon Garrison Artillery on Horsburgh Island in the Cocos Islands rebel in the Cocos Islands Mutiny. Their mutiny is crushed and three of them are executed, the only British Commonwealth soldiers to be executed for mutiny during the Second World War.
- 1942 –World War II: The Battle of the Coral Sea comes to an end with Japanese Imperial Navy aircraft carrier aircraft attacking and sinking the United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Lexington. The battle marks the first time in the naval history that two enemy fleets fight without visual contact between warring ships.
- 1945 –Hundreds of Algerian civilians are killed by French Army soldiers in the Sétif massacre.
- 1945 –World War II: V-E Day, combat ends in Europe. German forces agree in Rheims, France, to an unconditional surrender.
- 1963 –South Vietnamese soldiers of Catholic President Ngo Dinh Diem open fire on Buddhists defying a ban on the flying of the Buddhist flag on Vesak, killing nine.
- 1967 –The Philippine province of Davao is split into three: Davao del Norte, Davao del Sur, and Davao Oriental.
- 1972 –Vietnam War – U.S. President Richard M. Nixon announces his order to place mines in major North Vietnamese ports in order to stem the flow of weapons and other goods to that nation.
- 1973 –A 71-day standoff between federal authorities and the American Indian Movement members occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota ends with the surrender of the militants.
- 1978 –First ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, by Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler.
- 1980 –The eradication of smallpox is endorsed by the World Health Organization.
- 1984 –Corporal Denis Lortie enters the Quebec National Assembly and opens fire, killing three and wounding 13. René Jalbert, sergeant-at-arms of the assembly, succeeds in calming him, for which he will later receive the Cross of Valour.
- 1984 –Thames Barrier officially opened.
- 1987 –The Loughgall Ambush: The SAS kills eight Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers and a civilian during an ambush in Loughgall, Northern Ireland.
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