On This Day: Nelson Mandela Elected President

On May 8, 1945, Germany officially ceased military operations, ending the European conflict of World War II and prompting massive celebrations in Allied countries.

On May 8, 1973, members of the militant American Indian Movement who had held the South Dakota hamlet of Wounded Knee surrendered to federal agents after a 10-week standoff.

On May 3, 1988, former Reagan cabinet member Donald Regan claimed in his memoir that first lady Nancy Reagan had used astrological advice to help schedule President Reagan's activities.

On May 3, 1971, authorities in Washington quelled an anti-war protest organized by the Mayday Tribe, which had hoped to shut down the city. About 12,000 protesters were arrested over the course of several days, the largest mass arrest in U.S. history.

On April 20, 1971, in the case of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools.

On April 19, 1995, a truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring 500.

On April 6, 1909, an expedition led by Robert Peary may have reached the North Pole. A second explorer, Frederick Cook, claimed to have reached the pole a year earlier, though there are many doubts over each man’s claim and it is likely that neither actually reached the pole.

On April 5, 1887, teacher Anne Sullivan taught her blind and deaf pupil, Helen Keller, the meaning of the word “water” as spelled out in the manual alphabet.

On April 5, 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for conspiring to commit espionage for the Soviet Union. They were executed by electric chair in 1953, becoming the only two American civilians to be executed for Cold War espionage.

On March 29, 1961, the 23rd Amendment was ratified, granting residents of the District of Columbia to vote for electors in presidential elections for the first time.

On March 21, 1960, South African police fired into a crowd of black protesters who had surrounded a police station in Sharpeville, killing 69 and injuring an estimated 180 people. The massacre received international condemnation and changed the tone of the anti-apartheid movement.

On March 16, 1978, former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped by a left-wing extremist group; he was killed 55 days later when the terrorists’ demands were not met. Many in Italy believe that domestic or international government forces were complicit in the murder of Moro, who was due to sign a controversial agreement with the Communist Party on the day of his kidnapping.

On March 16, 1968, U.S, troops carried out a massacre of around 500 men, women and children in the Vietnamese village of My Lai.

On March 14, 1900, Congress ratified the Gold Standard Act, which ended the use of silver as a standard of United Stares currency and established gold as the only standard.

On March 14, 1991, six men wrongfully accused of carrying out IRA bombing attacks on two Birmingham pubs were released after the evidence against them was discredited.

On March 12, 1947, in a speech asking for aid to Greece and Turkey, President Harry Truman proposed the U.S. “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures,” a policy that became known as the Truman Doctrine.

On March 9, 1862, the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia, better known as the Merrimack, fought in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the first battle between two ironclad warships.

On March 2, 1877, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner of the 1876 presidential election over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden in one of the most disputed elections in American history.