Today's Highlight in History:
On May 9, 1754, a cartoon in Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette showed a snake cut into sections, each part representing an American colony; the caption read, "JOIN, or DIE."
On this date:
In 1883, Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset was born in Madrid.
In 1936, Italy annexed Ethiopia.
In 1945, U.S. officials announced that a midnight entertainment curfew was being lifted immediately.
In 1961, FCC chairman Newton N. Minow deplored the majority of television programming as a "vast wasteland" in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters.
In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee opened public hearings on whether to recommend the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon.
In 1978, the bullet-riddled body of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, who'd been abducted by the Red Brigades, was found in an automobile in Rome.
In 1980, 35 people were killed when a freighter rammed the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay in Florida, causing a 1,400-foot section to collapse.
In 1982, the musical "Nine," inspired by the Federico Fellini film "8 1/2," opened on Broadway.
In 1987, 183 people were killed when a New York-bound Polish jetliner crashed while attempting an emergency return to Warsaw.
In 1994, South Africa's newly elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela to be the country's first black president.
Ten years ago: A chartered bus carrying members of a casino club on a Mother's Day gambling excursion ran off a highway in New Orleans, killing 22 people. Furious Chinese demonstrators hurled rocks and debris into the U.S. Embassy in a second day of protests against NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia.
