On This Date May 8 (SUNDAY)

• 589 – Reccared summons the Third Council of Toledo
• 1450 – Jack Cade's Rebellion: Kentishmen revolt against King Henry VI.
• 1541 – Hernando de Soto reaches the Mississippi River and names it Río de Espíritu Santo.
• 1788 – The French Parlement is suspended to be replaced by the creation of forty-seven new courts.
• 1794 – Branded a traitor during the Reign of Terror by revolutionists, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who was also a tax collector with the Ferme Générale, is tried, convicted, and guillotined all on the same day in Paris.
• 1821 – Greek War of Independence: The Greeks defeat the Turks at the Battle of Gravia.
• 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.
• 1861 – American Civil War: Richmond, Virginia is named the capital of the Confederate States of America.
• 1877 – At Gilmore's Gardens in New York City, the first Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show opens.
• 1886 – Pharmacist John Styth Pemberton first sells a carbonated beverage named "Coca-Cola" as a patent medicine.
• 1898 – The first games of the Italian football league system are played.
• 1899 – The Irish Literary Theatre in Dublin opens.
• 1902 – In Martinique, Mount Pelée erupts, destroying the town of Saint-Pierre and killing over 30,000 people. Only a handful of residents survive the blast.
• 1914 – Paramount Pictures is founded.
• 1919 – Edward George Honey first proposes the idea of a moment of silence to commemorate The Armistice of World War I, which later results in the creation of Remembrance Day. In the United States it was called Armistice Day and is now Veterans Day.
• 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.
• 1941 – The German Luftwaffe launch a bombing raid on Nottingham and Derby
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 1945 – End of the Prague uprising, today celebrated as a national holiday in the Czech Republic.
• 1946 – Estonian school girls Aili Jõgi and Ageeda Paavel blow up the Soviet memorial which stood in front of the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn.
• 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.
• 1970 – The Hard Hat riot occurs in the Wall Street area of New York City as blue-collar construction workers clash with demonstrators protesting the Vietnam War.
• 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.
• 1976 – The rollercoaster Revolution, the first steel coaster with a vertical loop, opens at Six Flags Magic Mountain.
• 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 – The Soviet Union announces that it will boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California.
• 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.
• 1988 – A fire at Illinois Bell's Hinsdale Central Office triggers an extended 1AESS network outage once considered the 'worst telecommunications disaster in US telephone industry history' and still the worst to occur on Mother's Day.
• 1997 – A China Southern Airlines Boeing 737 crashes on approach into Bao'an International Airport, killing 35 people.