May 8, 2023
QUOTE
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
--Harry S. Truman
BIRTHDAYS
1821 – William Henry Vanderbilt, Businessman and philanthropist
1846 – Oscar Hammerstein I, Businessman and composer
1884 – Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States
1911 – Robert Johnson, Singer-songwriter and guitarist
1926 – Don Rickles, Comedian and actor
IN MEMORY
1982 – Neil Bogart, Record producer, co-founded Casablanca Records
1988 – Robert A. Heinlein, Science fiction writer and screenwriter
1994 – George Peppard, Actor and producer
2014 – Roger L. Easton, Scientist, co-invented GPS
IN ON THIS DAY
1541 – Hernando de Soto sees the Mississippi River, then known by the Spanish as Río de Espíritu Santo, the name given to it by Alonso Álvarez de Pineda in 1519.
1886 – Pharmacist John Pemberton first sells a carbonated beverage named “Coca-Cola” as a patent medicine.
1902 – Mount Pelée erupts, destroying the town of Saint-Pierre and killing over 30,000 people.
1912 – Paramount Pictures is founded.
1945 –The German Instrument of Surrender signed at Reims comes into effect.