Today is Saturday, May 9, the 130th day of 2020. There are 236 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On May 9, 1945, with World War II in Europe at an end, Soviet forces liberated Czechoslovakia from Nazi occupation. U.S. officials announced that a midnight entertainment curfew was being lifted immediately.

On this date:

In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson, acting on a joint congressional resolution, signed a proclamation designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

In 1961, in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton N. Minow decried the majority of television programming as a “vast wasteland.”

In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee opened public hearings on whether to recommend the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. (The committee ended up adopting three articles of impeachment against the president, who resigned before the full House took up any of them.)

In 1980, 35 people were killed when a freighter rammed the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay in Florida, causing a 1,400-foot section of the southbound span to collapse.

In 1994, South Africa’s newly elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela to be the country’s first black president.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor-writer Alan Bennett is 86. Actress-turned-politician Glenda Jackson is 84. Producer-director James L. Brooks is 83. Musician Sonny Curtis (Buddy Holly and the Crickets) is 83. Singer Tommy Roe is 78. Singer-musician Richie Furay (Buffalo Springfield and Poco) is 76. Actress Candice Bergen is 74. Pop singer Clint Holmes is 74. Actor Anthony Higgins is 73. Singer Billy Joel is 71. Blues singer-musician Bob Margolin is 71. Rock singer-musician Tom Petersson (Cheap Trick) is 70. Actress Alley Mills is 69. Actress Amy Hill is 67.

Thought for Today: “Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.” — Jose Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher (born this date in 1883, died in 1955).