Today is Thursday, May 8, the 128th day of 2014. There are 237 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On May 8, 1944, the first "eye bank" designed to preserve corneal tissues for transplants was
established at New York Hospital.
On this date:
In 1541, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto reached the Mississippi River.
In 1794, Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, was executed on the guillotine during
France’s Reign of Terror.
In 1884, the 33rd president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, was born in Lamar, Mo.
In 1921, Sweden’s Parliament voted to abolish the death penalty.
In 1945, President Harry S. Truman announced on radio that Nazi Germany’s forces had surrendered, and
that "the flags of freedom fly all over Europe."
In 1972, President Richard Nixon announced that he had ordered the mining of Haiphong Harbor during the
Vietnam War.
In 1973, militant American Indians who’d held the South Dakota hamlet of Wounded Knee for ten weeks
surrendered.
In 1984, the Soviet Union announced it would boycott the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Ten years ago: Former Iraq hostage Thomas Hamill returned home to a chorus of cheering family and friends
in Macon, Miss. (Hamill, a truck driver, was wounded and captured when his convoy was ambushed April 9,
2004; he escaped May 2 from a farmhouse about 50 miles north of Baghdad.)