Browse Historical Events by Day: What Happened on May 9th?

Athanasius is unanimously elected to be Bishop Patriarch of Alexandria after the death of Alexander. Athanasius was believed to be about 30 years old at the time. 

Christopher Columbus leaves on his fourth and final voyage from Cádiz, Spain, hoping to find a passage to Asia.
Columbus was born in Genoa 1451 and died in 1506 at age 54 

Japanese Emperor Kōkaku abdicates in favor of his son, Emperor Ninkō. This event marked a significant moment in Japanese history, as Kōkaku was the first emperor to remain on the throne past the age of 40 in two centuries. After abdicating, Kōkaku became a Daijō Tennō (retired emperor) and lived in the Sento Imperial Palace (Sakura Machi Palace) It is widely believed that the abdication  was a political move in an age of instability and Kokaku continued to be the power behind the throne until his death in 1840.

President Wilson makes his first Mothers Day proclamation after the U.S. Congress set the second Sunday of every May as the official Mothers Day celebration. By then most U.S. States were already celebrating Mother's Day. Julia Ward Howe (1872), a key women's rights figure and participant in the American Woman Suffrage Association and Anna Jarvis (1907) are also credited for suggesting and promoting the idea. The custom developed of wearing a red or pink carnation to represent a living mother or a white carnation for a mother who was deceased. The modern American version of the holiday has been criticized for becoming too commercialized. Many other countries have a multi-century history of a day to celebrate mothers on different dates. More

The FDA announces approval of Enovid for birth control. The approval limited its use to no more than two years. Nine years later, in 1969 Barbara Seaman’s book, “The Doctor’s Case Against the Pill,” show testimony and research showing that the high doses of estrogen in the early Pill put women at risk of blood clots, heart attacks, strokes, and cancer. History of Birth Control in the U.S.

William M. Beecher, New York Times military correspondent publishes a one-page dispatch from Washington, ‘Raids in Cambodia by US Unprotested,’ describing the first of recent B-52 raids in Cambodia and exposing President Richard M. Nixon's secret bombing campaign over Cambodia.  Within hours, Henry Kissinger, presidential assistant for national security affairs, contacts J. Edgar hoover, the director of the FBI, asking him to find the government sources of Beecher’s article. During the next two years, Alexander Haig, a key Kissinger assistant, transmitted the names of national Security Council staff members and reporters who were to have their telephones wiretapped by the FBI. More

Italy annexes Ethiopia as part of Italian East Africa, seven months after invading Ethiopia and driving Emperor Haile Selassie I into exile.