President Harry S. Truman officially declared V-E Day in 1945, setting off the celebration that marked the end of World War II in Europe. The date remains one of the clearest markers on the historical calendar: May 8 is the day the fighting stopped on the continent, and the world began to measure what came after.
That moment sits at the center of a long list of May 8 anniversaries. In 1915, the Admiralty said 703 passengers and crew of RMS Lusitania had been rescued after a U-boat attack the previous day, while more than 1,300 others were believed lost. Earlier still, in 1541, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto became the first European colonizer to discover the Mississippi River.
The century that followed produced its own turns. In 1909, President William Howard Taft said he would continue the conservation policies put in place by President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1970, Let It Be, The Beatles' final original album, was released. By 1984, the Soviet Union had said it would not take part in the Los Angeles Olympics, citing fears about security for its athletes.
May 8 also carried political change elsewhere. In 1988, France re-elected socialist Francois Mitterrand as president over conservative Prime Minister Jacques Chirac. In 1996, South Africa voted for a new Constitution that included a bill of rights covering food, housing and education. In 2007, Northern Ireland installed a new power-sharing government linking Catholic and Protestant parties.
Other May 8 entries are sharper, and darker. In 2003, dozens of people were reported killed after the rear door of a cargo jet suddenly opened at 33,000 feet over the Democratic Republic of the Congo, though many occupants managed to stay in the aircraft until it landed. In 2006, Lillian Asplund, 99, died of natural causes at her home in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts; she was the last known U.S. survivor of the 1912 sinking of the Titanic.
More recent dates have added their own footnotes. In 2011, a senior al-Qaida suspect grabbed a jailer's gun while being moved from his Baghdad cell for questioning, triggering a 6-hour battle that left at least 14 people dead. In 2016, Londoners elected Sadiq Khan as the first Muslim mayor in the capital city's history. In 2018, a 78-foot wave was observed off Campbell Island, New Zealand, the largest wave ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere.
In 2019, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the country would partially stop complying with the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with six other nations. In 2020, 11-year-old Brazilian skateboarder Gui Khury became the first person to successfully land a 1,080-degree turn on a vertical ramp, earning a Guinness World Record. And in 2022, the announced actor Ncuti Gatwa would play the 14th Doctor after Jodie Whittaker's retirement from the role, making him the first Black actor to play Doctor Who. For readers looking beyond history, May 8 in sports also arrived with movement, including Bengals Trade Down in Fourth Round, Still Hold Five Day 3 Picks, a reminder that the date keeps filling up with fresh developments even as the old ones stay fixed.