Today in History....May 8

On this day in …

* 1541, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto reached the Mississippi River

* 1794, Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, was executed on the guillotine during France's Reign of Terror

* 1846, the first major battle of the Mexican-American War was fought at Palo Alto, Texas, with no clear victory for either side

* 1886, Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton invented the flavor syrup for Coca-Cola

* 1945, President Truman announced in a radio address that World War II had ended in Europe

* 1958, Vice President Richard Nixon was shoved, stoned, booed and spat upon by anti-American protesters in Lima, Peru

* 1970, anti-war protests took place across the United States and around the world; in New York, construction workers broke up a demonstration on Wall Street

* 1973, militant American Indians who had held the South Dakota hamlet of Wounded Knee for 10 weeks surrendered

* 1987, Gary Hart, dogged by questions about his personal life, including his relationship with Miami model Donna Rice, withdrew from the race for the Democratic presidential nomination

* 1997, President Clinton assured Central American leaders during a summit in Costa Rica that they need not fear mass deportations of immigrants who'd sought refuge in the United States during U.S.-backed conflicts

* 2002, FBI Director Robert Mueller told a Senate committee that an FBI memo from Phoenix warning that several Arabs were suspiciously training at a U.S. aviation school would not have led officials to the 9/11 hijackers even if they had followed up the warning with more vigor

* 2006, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote to President Bush, proposing "new solutions" to their differences in the first letter from an Iranian head of state to an American president in 27 years